US Foreign Policy Goes “Woke”?

Regime change in store for cultural conservatives?

MARCH 7, 2023

Source

By Philip Giraldi

It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change. One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych. Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.

And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe. The early February visitor was Samantha Power, currently head of USAID, and a familiar figure from the Barack Obama Administration, where she served as Ambassador to the United Nations and was a dedicated liberal interventionist involved in the Libya debacle as well as various other wars started by that estimable Nobel Peace Prize recipient after he had received his award. The Obama attack on Syria has been sustained until this day, with several American military bases continuing to function on Syrian territory, stealing the country’s oil and agricultural produce.

USAID was founded in 1961 and it was intended to serve as a vehicle for nurturing democratic government and associated civic institutions among nations that had little or no experience in popular government. That role has become less relevant as nation states have evolved and the organization itself has responded by becoming more assertive in its role, pushing policies that have coincided with US foreign policy objectives. This has led some host nations to close down USAID offices. Within the US government itself, participants in foreign policy formulation often observe that USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) now are largely in the business of doing what the CIA used to do, i.e. interfering in local politics by supporting opposition parties and other dissident or even terrorist groups. Both organizations were very active in Ukraine in 2014 and served as conduits for money transfers to the opposition parties and those who were hostile to Russia’s influence for “democracy building.”

Samantha Power, who is married to another Democratic Party affiliated power broker, lawyer Cass Sunstein, traveled to Hungary on her diplomatic passport but took pains to cover her travel as a routine bureaucratic visit to an overseas post. Hungary is undeniably a democracy, is a member of the European Union, and also of NATO, but Power reportedly did not clear the travel with the Hungarian government and apparently did not meet with any government officials, even as a courtesy. She tweeted that her visit was to reestablish USAID in the Hungarian capital, “Great to be here in Budapest with @USAmbHungary where @USAID just relaunched new, locally-driven initiatives to help independent media thrive and reach new audiences, take on corruption and increase civic engagement.”

By “independent media” Power clearly meant that the US will be directly supporting opposition press that is anti-government and which embraces the globalist-progressive view currently favored by the White House. A US Embassy press release on the visit revealed that Power was in town as part of a project to relaunch seven USAID programs throughout Eastern Europe. It did not elaborate on the “corruption” that Power intended to address, which, of course, would have been a direct insult to the local governments wherever she intended to visit, nor did the document reveal that many of the groups that will be supported are likely to be affiliated with “globalist” George Soros.

In Budapest, Samantha Power did indeed meet with opposition political figures and civil organizations and groups, with particular emphasis on the homosexual community including “Joined @divaDgiV, @andraslederer, and @viki radvanyi for lunch in Budapest where we spoke about their work to advocate for LGBTQI+ rights and dignity in Hungary and around the world @budapestpride” as described in one of her tweeted messages after arrival. Power was also accompanied throughout by the highly controversial US Ambassador David Pressman, who is openly homosexual, of course, married to a man, and who has been highly critical of the conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which was reelected in 2022 by a landslide margin in a vote that was considered free and fair. Orban is disliked by Joe Biden’s Washington because he is conservative and a nationalist, not because he is incompetent or dishonest while Pressman was and is a perfect example of the Biden State Department sending a terrible fit as ambassador to an extremely conservative country just to make points with the gay community in the US. Pressman has persisted in telling Hungarians how to behave not only on foreign policy but also on sexual diversity and cultural issues and, for his efforts, was finally told to “shut up” by Hungary’s Foreign Minister.

To be sure, Hungary’s undeniably democratic government, which is politically and economically tied to Washington, does not support the United States-led strategy to prolong and even escalate the Russia-Ukraine war and will not contribute to arming Ukraine. It does not accept “globalist” open immigration that seeks to challenge the established national culture, and also opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds. It does not allow LGBTQ material to be presented to minors in state schools, which it considers to be morally correct anti-pedophilia legislation. For that reason, the time was clearly right, in the “woke” view of the Biden Administration, for Samantha Power to show up with a little dose of regime change in her portfolio. Hungarian officials had already expressed their concern over what they consider extreme pressure coming from the United States, largely because Hungary is a conservative country that values its culture and political independence. The visit by Power sent a signal to the Hungarian government and people that the pressure will likely increase and that Washington will not hesitate to use its embassies and overseas military bases to actively support groups that promote views that are not generally embraced by the local populations.

The Samantha Power story is of interest, to be sure, because it demonstrates that since the United States is the self-appointed enforcer of the “rules based international order” nothing in the world is off limits. Far too many US politicians and media pundits think that other states are not really sovereign and have to submit to US dictates in everything, and if they dare to step out of line they can be punished. If a conservative Christian country or leader – by which one might include Hungary, Russia or Brazil – believes that homosexuality or even abortion on demand are morally objectionable the US now believes that it has a mandate to use federal government resources to change that perception including by actively engaging with a foreign nation and its government on its own soil. To put it bluntly, the United States must certainly be considered the world leader in compelling all nations to conform to the political and moral values that it insists be adhered to.

So if one wants to learn why US Foreign Policy is so inept in terms of actually serving the interests of the American people, look no farther than was has happened and continues to roil in Ukraine as well as the implications of the Samantha Power visit to Hungary. For Foreign Service Posts, providing support for the agendas of the collection of freak shows that make up the Democratic Party has become manifestly as or even more important than promoting genuine national interests overseas or assisting American businesses and travelers.

What is perhaps most interesting is the way the “woke” foreign policy is being largely concealed from the American public and is being run as some kind of stealth operation. One initiative run by USAID in Macedonia in 2016 under President Obama included a $300,000 grant for “suitable” Macedonian applicants to “fund” a program entitled “LGBTI Inclusion” to counter how “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons continue to suffer discrimination and homophobic media content, both online and offline… Considerable efforts are still needed to raise awareness of and respect for diversity within society and to counter intolerance.” How many American taxpayers would be happy to learn that their hard-earned money has been going to support programs run in nonconsenting foreign democracies to make them more “woke?” Of course, no one in the Biden Administration is telling the public about it, nor is the story likely to appear in the mainstream media, so presumably no one will know!

Neocons’ Strategery

Feb 25, 2023

Putin’s Collaborators (?) and Distant Echoes of WW2

February 24, 2023

ٍSource

by Jimmie Moglia

By and large, for an ideology to take root among a people or a nation it is necessary to transform the individual into the mass man. For masses are – before in time and now often in the impalpable ether – what crowds are in space. Namely a large quantity of people unable to express their human qualities – for members of masses are not connected to each other either as individuals or as parts of a community. In fact they are only linked through some impersonal, abstract, crystallizing and often de-humanizing factor.

With crowds it can be, for example, a sports match, a huge sale, a morbid murder. With masses it is the drumming repetition of the same thing by the same media. Media – in turn – today overwhelmingly funded and overwhelmingly owned by historically old and yet modernized clever masters of the human mind and apostles of the thought-unique.

In essence, we can agree that masses are those who love they know not why, and hate upon no better ground, ever ready to accept the master’s line even when the verity of it is in strong suspicion.

That said, thanks to the imposed and aforementioned ‘thought unique’ he who does not agree with the US funded Ukrainian coup-d’etat of 2014, with the 8-year bombardment of the Donbass, with the open and openly Nazis nature of the current regime and army, with the banning of the Russian language, with the essential shutting down of the Ukrainian church and the imprisonment of some of its pastors… etc., this individual is variously defined as a ‘Putin’s Stooge’, and nostalgically, at least in France, as a ‘collaborator,’ more familiarly a ‘collabo’.

Collabo’ is a term coined to dishonor those Frenchmen who had acquiesced to live acquiescently within the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain during WW2. After France’s crushing defeat of 1940, Petain had come to terms with Hitler – and the ensuing regime got its name from its capital Vichy, a lovely town in the very lovely French region of Auvergne. It should be added, though easily forgotten, that Marshal Petain had been a hero of WW1, acclaimed as a national hero for having stopped the Germans at Verdun and having assumed command of the French forces in 1917. Which is why he was exiled but not killed after WW2.

I will return shortly to the analysis of who is a ‘collaborations’ and why, but I cannot resist relating an observation made in Paris, years ago, when France still held some independence from the cultural and political hegemony by the exceptional nation – exercised via the ‘collaboration’ within the European Union and, of course, NATO.

Among the large promotional posters attached to the walls of the metro stations, I remember one, featuring the large, beautiful view of a hilly, tranquil, bucolic, green and peaceful countryside, including a few very relaxed cows. The script on the poster said in English, “Auvergne, our Natural Resources.”

At the time, the thought-unique had not, as yet, driven France into the current extreme, self-defeating and demeaning position of subservience to the arrogant part of America, in just about all domains of life and endeavor. The poster was seemingly intended as a mild satire towards a culture that values nothing unless it represents a monetary return on investments.

For a description of the difference between the ‘arrogant’ and the ‘human’ part of America, please refer to my article “A Tale of Two Cultures.”

Returning to Ukraine, in the whole business, as most know, there are some metaphorical elephants in the metaphorical living room, even if, by convention, they are assumed to be invisible.

For in much of the Western world, whoever questions, however mildly and with supporting evidence, the narrative of an event actually inaugurated and named in New York in 1972, (over 30 years after its actual occurrence) this person, thanks to the democratic western values, including ‘freedom of expression’ can easily end up in jail.

Those condemned for this reason have been many. Emblematic is Ms. Ursula Haverbeck, who, being in no way a Hitler apologist, only questioned some of the questionable assertions related to the never-ending campaign launched, as mentioned, in 1972. For this she was jailed in Germany when she was 93-year young.

The whole thing is equally extraordinary and relevant to the issue dealt with here, considering that, in Ukraine, all know and witness a systematic re-interpretation of history, an inversion of values, a revolution in words and a reversal of meanings.

The American mastermind of the ‘Maidan Revolution’, the two ensuing Ukrainian presidents and some of the ministers are chosen people. While the most active and notorious personalities of the Ukrainian army (setting aside the mercenaries) are incontrovertibly Nazis. Even the main avenue in Kiev has been re-named ‘Bandera Avenue,’ in honor of Hitler’s collaborator and most popular partner of the Germans in Ukraine during WW2.

The ‘sponsor’ of the current president is equally chosen-people material, whose fiber and temper would not recommend themselves even to the most forgiving evaluator. (I wrote an article about him in May 2019, titled “The Bottom of the Barrel” https://thesaker.is/?s=The+bottom+of+the+barrel).

Equally notable are the multi-billion $$ ‘donations’ of arms to Ukraine by Giuseppe Biden. And even Bankman Fried – notorious hero of the recent close-to-a-billion $$ ruinous Ponzi scheme – has allegedly contributed 60 million $$ to the regime. While he has equally been hailed as a great co-religionist, great friend and great supporter of the current Ukrainian president.

Let’s now return to the issue of who is or isn’t a ‘collaborator’, or ‘collabo’ and if so, of whom, beginning with the lexicon.

‘Collaboration’ is a word of easy etymological determination. It derives from Latin, meaning ‘to work together’. Historically, ‘collaboration’ referred to the medieval meaning of “shared possessions acquired through work by a married couple.” However, in France, during the German occupation in WW2, it assumed the significance of ‘cooperating with the enemy’. And as if to ensure that the new WW2 meaning could not be confused with the original, the term ‘collaborator’ was shrunk into the shorter and disparaging-sounding word ‘collabo’.

The lexical metamorphosis began on October 24, 1940 when, in the little town of Montoire-sur-le-Loire, a meeting was held at the railway station between Adolf Hitler and Marshall Petain, president of France. A historical photo shows Petain shaking Hitler’s hand.

A transcription of the actual conversation is not available, but six days later, Petain, in a radio speech delivered while sitting by his fireplace, gave the French a status report on the situation. It is during this broadcast that he used the term ‘collaboration,’ in a significantly historical paragraph:

“It is a matter of honor, in order to maintain French unity, a unity spanning ten centuries – and in the context of a constructive new European Order – that today I have begun on a path of collaboration” (with Germany).

One important consideration. As a matter of principle and action, ‘collaboration’ was an integral foundation of Petain’s philosophy, in relation to the ‘new European order’ spoken-of in his radio address. Meaningfully, Petain’s words ‘new European order’ are omitted from French history texts in schools, referring to that period and event. Why? Because, in the sanctioned interpretation of history, it was/is important to emphasize Petain’s submission (to Germany) rather than collaboration. Which, more objectively, at least in my view, should have been called ‘modus vivendi’ – a sentence whose flavor of neutrality and antiquity, would better represent the condition when people who declared a war on an enemy and lost it, attempt to survive in objectively critical circumstances.

Still, given the aftermath of WW2 and the strongly promoted implementation of the European Union, Petain’s ‘new European order’ returned a few years later under a new flag and – we may add – with a vengeance.

Ever since, implicitly, explicitly, officially and unofficially the ‘new European order’ has been imposed, not to say forced-upon the seemingly complacent, compliant, beguiled, gullible, undisturbed and unruffled Europeans.

Furthermore, given that the tale of history cannot be told without (often) strategic and convenient omissions, a curious reader may be interested in another remarkably curious piece of news, usually (or strategically) omitted.

One important protagonist in the establishment of the current European Union was Walter Hallstein, a jurist most close to Hitler during the regime. Hallstein had accompanied Hitler in his state visit to Mussolini in Italy and had established the framework of the notorious ‘axe’ Hitler-Mussolini. Later he set up the legal framework for the ‘new European order’, now renamed ‘European Union’, including the structure of what would become the ‘Treaty of Rome’ of 1957. Equally, Walter Hallstein became the first president of the CEE Commission (Commission Economique pour l’Europe). In other words he was a pedigreed Nazi, though he successfully managed to hide it. So much so that I would wager that most of my 25 readers don’t know it.

While assigning NO value judgment to this historical truth, there is a connecting point or common denominator between Petain’s ‘collaboration in the context of a ‘new European order’ and the ‘collaboration’ in the context of Walter Hallstein even-newer European order. In both cases that connection, or context, or common denominator is submission.

It is because France was invaded that Petain did ‘collaborate.’ And apart from any related value judgment, who declared war on whom in WW2? It may be historically uncomfortable, yet it wasn’t Hitler but France who declared war on Germany, and so did England on the 3^rd of September 1939, one month and a half before the mentioned interview at Montaire.

Any historical consideration fails in its objective of clarification if it is not extracted from the web of intertwining events and – at least temporarily – considered as an independent fact. I am referring here to Hitler’s ‘Lebenraum’ (living space), a German rendering of American President Polk’s 19^th century notion of America’s ‘manifest destiny’ (see more about this later)

And why did France and England declare war on Germany? Because from the middle of the 1930s Germany had risen in power, aiming at agglomerating German-speaking countries, so as to redress the unfortunate and objectively despicable decisions taken at the end of WW1. When the map of Europe was re-drawn, creating new countries that contained a conspicuous proportion of Germans in speech and culture – notably Austria, created after the dismemberment of the millenarian Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Sudeten, the Western part of the new Republic of Czechoslovakia. A German survivor from the Sudeten, emigrated from Germany to Portland after WW2, used to recount harrowing episodes of mistreatment of the Germans by the Czecks after the Checks took over the Sudeten. Treating people as pawns and tokens is usually unadvisable. Even in our historical yesterday, the Czecks and the Slovaks found that they were not the same, or same enough to be part of the same state.

After Germany united with Austria in 1938 the Western powers became worried. They grumbled but accepted the fait-accompli at the famous Munich conference. Henceforth the West split among those in favor and those against the Munich agreement.

Missing, in the German reunification, was the ‘Danzig corridor’ earlier given to Poland. This practically split Prussia (the historical heart of modern Germany) from Germany proper.

On paper Danzig was the item of contention, apart from other German strategies. planned or pending. Poland refused to yield and Germany attacked Poland. Now England and France declared war on Germany.

It is currently fashionable, in certain quarters, to equate Putin with Hitler, but the comparison is not tenable. Russia does not harbor designs to invade other countries. The opposite is true. A map of Russia, produced after the end of the USSR by a US ‘think-tank’ features European Russia split into 4 independent states under US ‘protection’. While Russian Asia is up for grabs because it is ‘too big’ according to that poor imitation of a human, Victoria Nuland (Nudelman) who, Shakespeareanly speaking, is not worth the dust that the rude wind blows in her face.

In fact, after 1991 and the tumultuous dissolution of the USSR, in purely technical and historical terms NATO has assumed Hitler’s role. That is, the US has not ceased to erode and nibble at the geographical and strategic space protecting Russia. Which was accomplished by incorporating the Eastern States into NATO, also using the only slightly more chaste instrument of the ‘European Union’. The whole conducted in platitudinous breach of agreements and justified by the ridiculous claim that nothing in writing existed as a reference.

Therefore, watching the world from Russia’s point of view it is easy to see that all that Russia won in Europe after her enormous sacrifices in WW2, had been shattered.

Historically the situation is the mirror image of Europe in 1938-39, as seen by England and France. Wherefrom it follows that today’s Ukraine is yesterday’s Poland.

Besides, Ukraine is an integral part of Russia, of her people and history since 1654 and the Treaty of Perejeslav. Removing Ukraine from Russia (please refer to my article “America and Russia – Tale of Two Cultures) almost equates to removing Paris from France, Tuscany from Italy or Athens from Greece.

From Moscow’s point of view the situation is dangerous. Recent events show that the US destroyed Iraq and Libya nor has given up on Syria, all on behalf of an artificial, apartheid state that cannot be named. For they – Iraq, Libya and Syria – were the only countries upholding the rights of the Palestinians (along with Iran).

After the US-funded, South-American-style Maidan revolution in 2014, the threat against Russia became obvious and the damage direct – quite apart from the curious and extraordinary alliance of the resurrected Ukrainian Nazis with the new Ukrainian government, made up by members of the chosen people.

Returning to historical analogies, Russia’s action equates to what England and France did in 1939. Who would, today, dare to hold that England and France were wrong in declaring war on Hitler?

Yet at the time, the perception was quite different, starting with Petain and his ‘collaborationists’. Before the battle of Stalingrad, (1943), many in France held that Germany had not attacked France or England. Therefore why declare war on Germany?

In summary, those who compare Putin with Hitler should remember that it is exactly what England and France did to Germany. With a significant difference, England and France declared war on Germany to defend the Poles. Russia launched her military operation to defend the Russians. Quite apart from the remarkable admixture of a Nazi-inspired army and the post-Maidan Jewish government.

Besides, to be a collaborationist implies agreeing, conniving and cooperating with an enemy present in the territory. But Russia does not impose her rule on France or England, or anywhere else for that matter. Therefore those who accuse of collaborationism the dissenters on the American-NATO line on Russia are either not serious, or more likely in bad faith. How can one be a collaborationist with a country that does not occupy or plan to occupy the country of the collaborationists?

Instead, dominating England, France and Europe at large is the exceptional nation. To quote verbatim from a Biden’s statement, (Nov 24, 20) “America is back and ready to lead the world.” Where ‘being back’ meant a sharp break from the ‘America first’ inspired foreign policy of Donald Trump.

Militarily speaking it is difficult to argue that Europe is NOT under US occupation. DeGaulle himself detected and denounced the overpowering, constraining and conditioning presence of the US in France – which led him to exit NATO and impose the closing of the US bases in France in 1966.

Later President Mitterand echoed the same sentiments and policies. Whereas the current French president Macron appears but a reservist of the exceptional nation.

Therefore the label of ‘Putin’s collaborator’ assigned to dissenters is absurd. The real collaborator is he who is hand and glove with those who dominate and impose their geo-political choices in Europe at large.

Besides, nowhere, in Russia’s history or known archives, will be found a document declaring or theorizing that Russia should conquer Europe or the world. Hence it cannot be argued that if Putin takes Ukraine, he will then conquer Poland, Germany, France etc.

Such theory, if it existed, would have manifested itself since long, and comparing the Russian Federation with the Soviet regime is absurd. The USSR was the embodiment of Marxist theories applied to world revolution. Nor it is antisemitic to remember that members of the chosen people made up 95% of the first Politburo. Besides, on the 200^th anniversary of Karl Marx’ birth (April 30, 2018) the New York Times – the official opinion of America – whose ownership, ever since 1895 is politely left unsaid, and yet unbroken and undisputed – published a conspicuous article titled, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!”

But returning to the main point, Russia, under Putin, has attempted to reestablish the security that the nation had before its dissolution.

In Asia all that Russia wants is that the ex-USSR countries do not become a threat. There was a hint of another Maidan two years ago in Kazakhstan, fortunately dispelled in time. Interested readers may refer to my related video (https://youtu.be/whXvQ765t-M)

Most of us agree that the sovereignty of a country does not imply the right of being a threat to her neighbors.

Besides, there are no extant text, present or past, theorizing or suggesting that Russia should dominate the universe, or at least entire continents and countries at large. Something equivalent to Kagan’s (Victoria Nuland’s husband), “Plan for a New American Century.”

In comparison, though the fact is not usually explained or discussed in schools, on December 2, 1823, the fifth president of the United States James Monroe, established his ‘Monroe doctrine,’ whereby North and South America should exist under total control of the United States.

The doctrine did not imply isolationism. Rather it implied preventing any intervention or participation by European countries into the affairs of the American continent. That is, the scope of the doctrine was not isolationism but interdiction of any other state or country from having anything to do with the Americas.

Another relevant historical date is December 2, 1845 when the 10^th president of the United States, James Polk pronounced a speech containing the words ‘manifest destiny’, referring to a quasi-supernatural license granted to the United States for dominating all lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

At the time, the hub of the United States was in the East, and the Western expansion was still in progress. Much of the center and the whole west were Mexican lands: California, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada. While lands north of Oregon belonged to Britain.

Henceforth, the US would fight Mexico in the South and antagonize Britain in the North to secure ‘full spectrum dominance’ in those lands, because the gods had said so.

The history of Texas deserves a brief mention. Mexico had invited American settlers to Mexico, which they did. But in 1829 Mexico abolished slavery, which Texas was not yet ready to do away with. The settlers rebelled, Texas became independent, and they retained slavery until the 1860s and the Civil War.

Yet, the spirit of independence (leaving the Union) has still its largest appeal in Texas. Showing that history counts and that traditions don’t die quickly.

In the end, President Polk managed to secure the largest territorial expansion and extension of the United States ever. Yet Polk’s ‘manifest destiny’ never died and still informs and inspires current US international policy, as all can see.

Terms other than ‘manifest destiny’ may apply: ‘indispensable nation’, ‘exceptional nation’. Thay are but cosmetic variations on the theme. For in our current society of the spectacle trifle is king rather than meaning. And trifles always require an exuberance of ornament, as provided by commercial media.

For the building which has no strength can be valued only for the showiness of its decorations. The pebble must be masked with care, which hopes to be valued as a diamond; and words can be cleverly labored when they are intended to numb the mind and to replace nothingness.

Besides, expecting a change of mind or heart from current Western politicians is naïve. Theirs is a life of little work and much luxury. And when a position teems with such pleasant consequences, who can without regret confess it to be false? Furthermore, in the current US political landscape, arrogance seems recommended as the supply of every defect and the ornament of every (supposed) excellence. Alternatively, those who are unable to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox, as in the case of the “Putin Collaborators”.

“To continue receiving notification of Jimmie Moglia’s videos, articles and books please subscribe to his Twitter account @jimmiemoglia “

Endgame for Ukraine: America vs America

February 13, 2023

Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Alastair Crooke

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance?

Hysterics at the Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. – taken to volume 11 – through scrambling a hush-hush Raptor jet (F-22) to ‘pop’ it, and then bally-hooing the ‘pop’ as Raptor’s first ever ‘air-to-air kill’, may be a source for quiet derision around the world, yet paradoxically this seemingly trivial event may cast a long shadow over the U.S. war-timetable for Ukraine.

For it is the U.S. political calendar that may yet determine what happens next in Ukraine – from the western side.

Seemingly nothing important occurred – it was an instant of spy frenzy, leaving Biden’s ‘tough task’ unchanged: He needs to convince the American voter, facing collapsing standards of living, that they misread the ‘runes’; that rather than gloom, the economy – contrary to their lived experience – is ‘working well for them’.

Biden needs to perform this magic against polls that say only 16% of Americans feel better off since the start of his tenure, and 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters wish him to not stand in 2024. Significantly, this message is coming today from the Democratic-leaning media, suggesting thoughts of replacing him are already in circulation.

For now, Biden’s allies in the party establishment (the DNC) continue to clear the way for his candidature – postponing initial primaries (in which Biden could be expected to be trounced) for a later South Carolina primary election, where Black and Latino voters would reflect demographics in which Biden might (possibly) shine. It may work; it may not.

Simply put, against this highly sceptical Party backdrop, Biden will have to change American perceptions of the economy at a moment when many indicators signal further deterioration. It will be a ‘heavy lift’. The economic team, for sure, will be insisting: ‘Keep the focus on economic achievements! We don’t want distractions from any foreign policy débacles; We do not want the TV debates to centre on Balloons, or around Abrams tanks: ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’’.

The ‘Chinese balloon’ was popped, yes, but similarly popped was Team Biden’s hope to negotiate a limited understanding with a tetchy President Xi that could stop China tensions becoming a spoiler issue in the primary debates. The balloon incident obliged the U.S. to cancel Blinken’s appointment with Xi (even though such a meeting with the head of state would be a rare event).

The powerful ‘China hawk’ faction in the U.S. was ecstatic. The China balloon ‘kill’ inadvertently, and in an instant, elevated China to ‘Main Threat’. It was the chance for these hawks to ‘pivot’ foreign policy back from Ukraine and Russia – to fully focus on China.

They make the case that Ukraine was ‘eating’ too much of America’s arms inventory. It was leaving America vulnerable; already, it would take years for the U.S. to make up for this equipment loss by reinstating weapons supply-lines. And there is ‘no time to spare’. The military ‘deterrence fence’ around China has to be in place – ASAP.

Naturally, the tight neo-con circle around Biden – some of whom have invested in the ‘Destroy Russia’ project for decades – is not ready to ‘let go’ the Ukraine project, for China.

Yet, the Ukraine narrative ‘bubble’ has been punctured, and has been leaking helium for some time. The Beltway – and even the MSM narrative – has pirouetted from ‘Russia losing’ to an ‘Ukrainian defeat is inevitable’. Indeed, Kiev is defeated, and is hanging by the slenderest of threads.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s senior adviser and former ‘spin doctor’ in the Presidential office, speaking in late January this year, was candid in his assessment:

“If everyone thinks that we are guaranteed to win the war, then it is very unlikely. Since January 14, it has ceased to be like this. What do you think, that the assessment from the President of Poland, Duda, not only did he say this about the decisive months. That it is generally unknown whether Ukraine will survive …

“The war may not end as the Ukrainians expect, and as a result, Ukraine may not return all its territories, and the West is ready to follow such a scenario … What will happen to the society that raised its expectations too high, but will receive a conditional Minsk-3? This recoil of unfulfilled expectations will hit us so hard – morally and everything else – that we will simply be stunned.

“The way out of this war may not be at all what it seemed to us three months ago, after the success of the Kherson operation. And not because the insidious Americans do not give weapons or delay, but because success requires 400 thousand of perfectly trained soldiers with NATO weapons to grind it all up and liberate the territories. Do we have it? No. Will it be next year? Will not be. There will not be enough training facilities…

“We as a society are not ready for such an outcome. I decided to say it as the expectation of the Russian side. But the most unpleasant thing is that in the West they think the same way, and we are totally dependent on them. What should the West do? The scenario of two Koreas. Create South Korea with guarantees”, Arestovich said, adding that with this option, Ukraine can get a lot of bonuses.

Put bluntly, if Biden is to avoid a repeat of the humiliating Afghan débacle, America needs urgently to to move-on before the 2024 Presidential calendar kicks-off this summer – with Ukraine/Russia sucking all the oxygen out from the coming economic debates.

But that is not what is happening. Victoria Nuland – who has been ‘capo’ in Kiev for a decade – is overseeing a purge: Unreliables are ‘out’, and pro-American radical Ukrainian hawks are ‘in’. It is a make-over of the Kiev mafia, which leaves Zelensky without friends – and wholly dependent on Washington. It looks to be preparation for the U.S. to attempt a double-down in Ukraine.

Seymour Hersh’s detailed article on the backdrop to the Nordstream pipeline sabotage by the U.S., on which Hersh worked for many months (though his assertions have been denied by the White House), tells us something highly significant.

All the familiar, anti-Russia neo-cons (Nuland, Sullivan and Blinken) were part of the Nordstream sabotage plot – but the impulse for it came from Biden. He led it. And just to be plain, Biden is just as emotionally invested in Ukraine as his team mates; it is likely that he too cannot ‘let go’ in Ukraine.

BUT, doubling down now, in Ukraine, won’t work for Biden. It would be highly reckless (although the Nordstream plot was nothing, if not reckless).

Doubling-down will not bring his hoped-for ‘win’, because its logic is based on an egregious mis-analysis.

Olexii Arestovich, Zelensky’s former ‘spin doctor’ and adviser, has described the circumstance of the Russian SMO first entry into Ukraine: It was conceived as a bloodless mission and should have passed without casualties, he says. “They tried to wage a smart war… Such an elegant, beautiful, lightning-fast special operation, where polite people, without causing any damage to either a kitten or a child, eliminated the few who resisted. They didn’t want to kill anyone: Just sign the renunciation”.

The point here is that what occurred was political miscalculation by Moscow – and not military failure. The initial aim of the SMO didn’t work. No negotiations resulted. Yet from it flowed two major consequences: NATO controllers pounced on this interpretation to trumpet their pre-conceived bias that Russia was militarily weak, backward and stumbling. That misreading underlay how NATO perceived Russia would prosecute the war.

It was wholly incorrect. Russia is strong and has military predominance.

On the presumption of weakness, however, NATO switched plans from a planned guerrilla insurgency, to conventional war along the ‘Zelensky Defence Lines’ – thus opening the path for Russia’s artillery domination to attrit Ukraine’s forces to the point of entropy. It is an error that cannot be rectified. And to try it might just lead to WW3.

The Abrams M1 tank will not save Biden from débacle in the lead-up to the U.S. election debates:

“It was designed for the kind of tank-on-tank combat that hasn’t happened since WW2. It’s huge, expensive, full of sorts of electronics. And powered by a repurposed jet engine. It breaks down quickly and needs its own army of mechanics, runs out of gas quickly and at almost 70 tonnes, it is too heavy to cross most bridges and needs specialized bridge crossing equipment. And it sinks in the mud. The Saudis used Abrams tanks in Yemen – and lost 20 to the Houthis, not exactly the most sophisticated military force”.

So, how does this all pan out? Well, the fight is on – in Washington. The China hawks will try to wrench the U.S.’ full attention back to China. The Biden neo-cons may try for some escalatory tactic in Ukraine that makes war with Russia unstoppable.

However, the reality is that the Ukraine ‘Balloon’ is popped. Military and civilian circles in Washington know it. The ‘elephant in the room’ of inevitable Russian success is acknowledged (albeit, with the compulsion to avoid seeming ‘defeatist’ – that persists in certain quarters). They know too that the NATO (as ‘formidable force’) ‘balloon’ has popped. They know that the balloon of western industrial capacity to manufacture weapons – in sufficient quantity and over a long duration – has popped also.

The consequences are the risk of severe U.S. reputational damage, the longer the war persists. These circles do not want that. Perhaps they will conclude that Biden is not the man to lead the U.S. out of this blind alley – that he is the part of the problem, and not the solution. If so, he must be gone in good time for the Democrats to work out who they want to lead them into the 2024 Presidential election (no easy prospect).

They may sense too, that the 2024 campaign lines already are coalescing for the Republican Party, which has its own reading of the Ukraine débacle – ‘Let’s exit from Ukraine to confront China’ (with full bi-partisan support). This means firstly, that the thread of U.S. financial support for Ukraine – as Bill Burns (CIA chief) reportedly told Zelensky on his last visit – likely will taper this summer. And secondly, it hints that any bi-partisan support for further arming Kiev may be over by the time the primary season will be in full swing.

Bill Burns travelled (in secret) in mid-January to meet Zelensky. Was it to prepare Zelensky for a shift in the American stance? Burns, the long-standing U.S. quiet negotiator, is not party to the Nuland programme. The former said at Georgetown Universityin early February that “China remains the biggest geopolitical challenge the U.S. faces in the decades ahead, and the biggest priority for CIA”. His framing, ‘was not a bug, but the substance’ in his address.

Nuland may be planting U.S.-aligned hawks around Zelensky in order to continue the war, but there are other, wider interests within Washington. Financial circles are worried about a market collapse that could lead to the dollar haemorrhaging value. There are worries too, that the Ukraine war is contributing to a serious weakening of America’s standing in the world. And there are concerns that a reckless Team Biden could lose control and take the U.S. into a wider war with Russia.

In any event, time is short. The Election Calendar looms. Is Biden to be the Democratic candidate? Whether or not he will be a candidate in 2024 needs to be resolved before the early primaries to allow any successor to demonstrate his or her paces in good time.

Also by this author

• Russia’s Strategic Aims – In Consequence to a Collapsing U.S.
• Empire‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss
• The Most Egregious Mistake
• The 2023 War – ‘Setting the Theatre’
• U.S. Strategic Aim: Break and Dismember Russia; Or Maintain U.S. Dollar Hegemony? 

Desperate actions

January 31, 2023

Source

by Hugo Dionísio

Something is changing on Mount Olympus and it is leaving in tatters the union of tendencies connected to the U.S.-state falconry. To understand and predict the actions of the political elite that commands, through their transnational mandataries, our destinies, implies knowing what one of the most important US defense think tanks reflects and publishes. This research leads us to an entity that rarely appears in the “informative” moments of the North Atlantic press: the RAND Corporation.

RAND’s best-known moment with regard to the conflict in Eastern Europe is signaled by the publication of the report “Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground”. This report contains the entire menu of malfeasance that, in the claims made public and repeated by the US power summit, would lead to a fulminating defeat of the political, economic, and military power of the Russian Federation.

The analysis expressed publicly, by the various political actors, was that the Russian Federation was nothing more than “a gasoline bomb with nuclear weapons,” a “paper tiger” with a GDP equal to that of Holland, and a people gagged by a “mad dictator” who remained in power only through “authoritarianism” and “repression”.

Based on an analysis whose information seemed to substantiate such political positions, the RAND report advocated a type of intervention, some of which were well reported – others not so well reported – in the official press. This was the case with the attempted “colored” revolutions made in CIA in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian countries, which, together with Georgia and Moldova, would probably be “promoted” and “supported” to the condition of an actual Ukraine. The Russian Federation, having to meet all the fires, some because they would become proxy armies (like Ukraine), others turned into bases of destabilizing operations launched by the CIA, would eventually “extend” itself until it broke into pieces and collapsed, putting an end to the current threat. Even without this partition, a point could always be reached where, after the destruction of the incumbent political power, a more docile “regime” would be installed, pointing to a more “advantageous position on the ground.”

Given to be known only in 2019, we are forced to note that this strategy had long been in preparation, especially since the Russian president lost hope that he could count on a Western “partnership” and announce the end of the unipolar world. Fact is, the report has a logical connection with the 2018 National Defense Strategy (US national defense strategy).

At any rate, this strategy points to the “Yugoslavization” of the Russian Federation. The truth is that the constant itinerary of this work has been followed almost scrupulously by the U.S. security and defense establishment: “colored” revolutions; states transformed into proxy armies; communication and disinformation campaigns; destabilization and sabotage operations; economic sanctions and embargoes. A menu of fulminating “democratic” activities on the rise!

And why is it important to talk about this today? It is important because in the last few days a new paper from the RAND corporation was published, but this time in reverse, a study entitled “Avoiding a Long War U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.”

If the previous works pointed to the goals that Anthony Blinken, Biden, Nuland and Kirby have so often trumpeted, namely, a long-lasting conflict that would exhaust Russian energies so that the obstacle could be removed by force if necessary, the study published this time points to the realization of a cost-benefit ratio between the costs and risks resulting from a long war with Moscow and the benefits that the U.S. can derive from a trajectory that is expected to escalate and could result in a direct confrontation.

Something has changed and in what ways. First it was triumphalism and threat destruction, now a long conflict brings risks and costs that prevent the US from focusing on more pressing priorities. Where do we stand? At first it was intended, precisely, a long-lasting conflict… Now, not only does it carry costs and risks, but it seems to be Russia itself that is more comfortable with the foreseeable extension of the conflict in time, to the point of appointing Gerasimov as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, envisaging more than one theater of operations simultaneously (RAND pointed to the bilateral Polish possibility).

According to the site http://www.moonofalabama.org , one of the best sources on US foreign policy, the publication of this study does not come by chance, but after an attempt by the US Chief of Staff, Mark Milley, to promote an internal debate on possible peace negotiations with Biden. Having lost the battle in the White House, and unable to persuade Biden, as he only listens to Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan (the hawks on duty), he opted for the public display of his claim, calling for the start of negotiations first and, perhaps, leading to the publication of this study later.

The problem is, as Tyler Durden writes in one of today’s best opinion sites http://www.zerohedge.com , in his article “The most egregious Mistake”, going back and reversing the direction of US policy in this matter is simply not an option. The White House has taken the entire West in such a direction and speed of triumphalism, arrogance and “egregious” imbecility that there is no going back or reversal possible without a total defeat of the official narrative and the consequent eternal shame. Hence, these efforts by Mark Miller should result in very little, except the deepening of internal fractures, which may be positive. The fact is, there are already people who intend to step out of this path to the abyss.

Now, unlike the various writings on the subject, which tend to explain the impossibility of reversing the direction of the current suicidal strategy, with the sectarianism of the official narrative, which only offers certainties and unequivocal results, according to which, initially, this strategy did not result from a necessity but from a choice, translated into the so-called “egregious error”, I, personally, tend to consider that it was not an “error”, nor even less a choice, but rather, an act of desperation.

The alternative – American – narrative to the official current says that the outlined strategy represented an existential threat for Russia, but not for the United States. For the US, it would be possible to take other paths than that of creating this conflict.

In my view, this is a condescending position that devalues the feelings of urgency that resulted from the catastrophic analysis (never made public) that many have probably made of the state of American hegemony. The fact is that while the US has spent 8 trillion dollars on the war on terror, channeling all its diplomatic, economic and military efforts into it… What have Russia and China done?

While the U.S. used the pretext of terrorism (which they themselves have so often fomented and used as a weapon against political opponents – Syria, for example) to dominate the world’s largest oil reserves (in the Middle East), sidelining other natural resources, which today are important (such as lithium, for example), China developed its infrastructure, industry, army and, above all, its international trade platform, today known as the Belt and Road Initiative. During this period, the global south was able to experience a new form of “soft power”, which instead of demanding privatizations, dollarization of the economy, and reformulation of the political system in the manner that was most convenient, of which the IMF and the World Bank were the proxies on duty, the integration into the BRI only requires that the projects facilitate trade between countries (hence the infrastructure). In exchange for natural resources, these countries – instead of Western corporations and “investment” translated into the purchase of public companies – receive schools, hospitals, 4G and 5G networks, ports, airports, bridges, and the bigger and more challenging the better.

Not even the propaganda of the “debt trap”, well known to the IMF and the association treaties with the USA, prevented more than 120 countries from joining this network. Meanwhile and in the same period of time, Russia was able to get back on its feet from the neoliberal nightmare of the 1990s, recovering its industry and, above all, its self-esteem and national pride. A mortal sin in the eyes of the white house. Eurasian integration (EUEA), international cooperation (BRICS) and infrastructure (INSTC) projects have been made that circumvent US influence across the seas, which helps shield the economies of the countries involved.

While this multipolar world was being born in the beards of the most arrogant and sectarian hawks, the military industrial complex focused its attentions on the war on terror. Our news reports at the time, instead of Ukraine, began and ended with suicide bombings and time bombs. Until…

When information about this world began to emerge in the form of hard data, panic began to set in. It was around the time of 2017/18. Of course, from my perspective, this panic cannot be confessed. Its externalization began to emerge through Euromaidan, pressure and destabilization on less aligned Latin American nations, with the arrest of Lula da Silva and other national leaders with whose policies the white house was not comfortable. Gradually we saw U.S. foreign policy shift back toward dominance of natural resources and markets and less toward terrorism. They even “abandoned” the Middle East, leaving only the Zionist and Kurdish watchdogs. It was the time of the news that opened and closed with Venezuela.

However, this reversal of course already denoted, in my opinion, a kind of race against time. Time that had to be won.

Faced with the continuous loss of ground, we have reached the time of Covid (which according to many is a White House “card”, provoked or opportunistic, we shall see in due time) and the construction of a military strategy that has been elected as the last of the means – far from being remote – to “contain” China, recently classified as an “existential threat”. The confrontation in the Pacific would pass through the creation of an Eastern NATO, baptized AUKUS. In this strategy, the obstacles that could tip the balance in favor of the enemy had to be removed. That obstacle is the Russian Federation. The conclusion of a true strategic alliance between the Russian Federation and China shows that the leaders of these two countries no longer have any illusions about the real intentions of the United States. The more they are together, the greater their protection and the greater the threat to the United States.

This is where the “Ukrainian” option comes in! The strategy of extending Russia until it left was not an option. It was a desperate action. Absolutely! And why?

I say this not only because of what I mentioned earlier and the urgency that the elite leaders of the Transnational Corporations (the backbone of the U.S. Empire) must have felt at the information that was reaching them. At this stage, it must be said that the “failure” of the Chinese strategy played a part in this desperation. For the corporate elite who control the political power in the US, the economic “opening” of China would certainly lead (I don’t know what science they based their opinion on) to the destruction of the Communist Party’s power and the installation of a neo-liberal type government. Hong Kong will have already been a forced step, as these folks believed that the process would be more or less “natural”, resulting in a “USSR” type collapse, this time in China. But no… By around 2018 it was already being said in the white house that they would have to learn to live with China as it was. There would be no new “Tiananmen” in sight.

For the transnational corporate elite there is no cooperation. There is domination. After all, that is the fuel and the adrenaline of empire. Anyone’s. But back to Eastern Europe, why do I say that the Ukrainian choice was desperate?

First it was forced. And it was forced because it resulted from the failure of people like Navalny and other neoliberal puppets, who should have been able to produce an attrition of United Russia’s power. The preferred option is always the one that involves the internal deconstruction and submission of the adversary. Failing this, the only option left is the military one. The military is the component in which the United States still considers itself superior.

The RAND report pointed to a set of “tasks” that should be accomplished in order to achieve the goal of “extending Russia” and thus achieve a “more advantageous position on the ground. Has that desideratum been achieved? No, not by a long shot.

First, the “color” revolutions in Belarus and Kazakhstan failed. Not only did they fail to remove their respective rulers, they worsened their situation on the ground by strengthening Russia’s power over those countries (the respective governments “saved” by it). Second, they failed the sanctions from 2014 onward by not destroying the Russian economy. Worse, they gave the country an ability to live with the West’s sanctions. The sanctions were “the” development opportunity, the missing pretext to move from an economy based solely on resource extraction, to an industrial, in some cases cutting-edge and full-cycle economy, i.e., with key sectors sovereign and shielded against sabotage maneuvers, from the outside. Third, Georgia did not take the bait and set itself up as a proxy army, failing the plan of creating several battlefronts. Out of all this the Russian Federation came out stronger.

While the outward discourse, for ideological and strategic reasons, continued to be that of the “fuel station,” the actions denoted only desperation. The very instrumentalization of the Minsk agreements, agreements sanctioned by the UN, as a way to gain time to arm Ukraine, totally discredited the West in the eyes of the global south. Anyone who deceives like this, a country like Russia, by relying on a process like the Minsk one, is capable of anything.

The fact that they managed to “convince” a country to sacrifice itself for the sake of the power of another, basing this “convincing” on the establishment of a neo-Nazi doctrine, recovering Bandera (directly responsible for the death of millions of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews), based on xenophobia, racial and cultural hatred, leading that country to a coup d’état perpetrated by forces comparable to the SS, and making all these people look like martyrs and heroes, and even removing the Azov battalion from the list of extremist organizations… It was another stab in the back of the confidence of a world composed of nations whose memories have not yet been erased and who know what bad things fascism and Nazism brought them. This same world also knows the decisive contribution that the USSR – and Russia, for that matter – made in the 20th century to the defeat of colonialism and to the national liberation of the majority of humanity.

It was also about liberation from the clutches of Western imperialism and colonialism. From the same West that used plunder as a moment of primitive appropriation of wealth, that allowed it to first achieve development, and then used it to further subjugate the plundered. No, this world no longer trusts the West. This world is not the same world that the corporate media claims to be with Zelinsky.

The official discourse denied all this reality and sold an illusion, according to which, Ukraine, with the help of the powerful NATO, would win, without appeal or aggravation, a war of attrition against Russia. Of course, the victory would be so resounding that the attrition would not even begin, for at the first sanctions, power would fall to the street. Even the thousands of Russian agents the CIA has in its pocket weren’t able to pull it off. Power not only fell but strengthened, demonstrating that the proud nation that, being harried from without, turns on itself is yet to be born. RAND’s assumptions kept getting further and further from being true.

According to the imbecility resulting from the superiority complex of Western elites, a country with 3% of global GDP would not stand a chance against the mighty G7/NATO/US. Which says a lot about the GDP method as a way of characterizing an economy. As “old man” Marx explained, only labor produces wealth and only the transformation of matter into something with use value translates that wealth. This is the “real economy” of which Martyanov speaks so much. Unlike the speculative and ultra-financialized economy of the West, Russia has a real economy, which produces things with use value. With “real” use value, without which we cannot live, unlike an iPhone or a Chanel perfume. In fact, the global south has been gradually discovering that it has the resources, the technology and the wealth to have a real economy. And it doesn’t need the West for that. It is the West that cannot live without the global south, not the other way around. The global south has figured it out, and so has the US.

Seeing this, and watching the deplorable spectacle that is the constant confiscation of sovereign amounts deposited in dollars or euros, which the West, at the behest of the US, steals so much, today we are witnessing a movement away from the dollar…

In this, too, we have much despair, such as the process that led to the “installation” of a Guaido in Venezuela or the successive attempts at a “colored” revolution in Iran. In both cases, the two countries saw their reservations “frozen” in the G7/NATO/EU space. If this move by itself had already put many countries on their guard, since it was no longer only the “communist” Cuba and the People’s Republic of Korea, this time, the freezing and intended confiscation of Russian reserves clearly pushed the panic button. Any country, regardless of size, if it does not accept submission, is subject to confiscation of everything it has in currencies of the collective West.

The result? The result is BRICS+ and the basket of currencies, the proposal for a Latin American currency between Brazil and Argentina, the return to gold, cryptoyuan and the multiplication of exchanges in national currencies, as is already happening between the Eurasian countries, Iran, China, India, Turkey and Russia, recently joined by Pakistan, or the case of Saudi Arabia and China. The challenge seems to be simple: escape the “cursed” currencies, but without appearing to do so urgently, lest everything fall into place.

This result was obvious and has been predicted so many times over the past decade. Even in unsuspecting channels from the point of view of neoliberal ideology like Bloomberg or Politico. But not even these warnings have deterred the suicidal arrogance and prepotency that results from 500 years of Western racial supremacy.

Today, after Annalena Berbock confirmed to us that we have been dragged into a war, without any democratic background discussion and public reflection, except for endless hours of “slava Ukraini” propaganda in the corporate media; such a war also starts from an underestimation of the military and industrial capabilities of the Russian federation itself. If we read the report made by the Congress a couple of years ago about the military capabilities of the Russian Federation, we would see that the general conclusion was something like: a lot of weapons, but unsophisticated, with precision problems and outdated in relation to the U.S. But this is not the story told by the more than 7,500 tanks shot down, the more than 300 planes, more than 200 helicopters and, most important of all, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, mainly of soldiers (Zaluzhny reportedly told the Pentagon that there were 232,000, CIA sources say 305,000, and Chinese intelligence is already talking about 500,000 to 680,000). Whether it is the smallest or the smallest, especially when compared to the Russian losses, it gives us a catastrophic idea of the disproportion of forces. We are indeed witnessing a process of demilitarization and denazification.

With this background, the sending of tanks was discussed, in another episode of “wonder weapons”. But this time, and after the others did not have the desired effect, the US no longer wants to throw more arms sales deals on the back burner, as happened with the “wonderful” HIMAR or M777. Send their Abrahms tanks there and soon the number of sales would drop. So, let the Germans send their Panzer-Gepard there. Sholz didn’t want to? When I heard him say that he would only send them if… I immediately thought, “he still hasn’t received the non-refusable request from Biden and friends”. It didn’t take a day for pictures of the tanks to appear on their way to Poland, even before the public announcement. This is the Germany of today: a cluster of Teutonic identity riders mounted on unicorns, wearing pink armor, and holding sunflowers instead of swords. How sad!

Be that as it may, a spring campaign is being prepared in which, to defend the USA, another 100,000 forcibly recruited Ukrainian soldiers will be sacrificed in the name of Bandera (the videos of people being caught in the streets, in shopping malls, hiding from the police… are multiplying at breakneck speed)!

Having already guaranteed the defeat of the offensive (come on… a country like FR would rather sacrifice millions of its best children than submit to some Western empire), the US is already preparing for the next desperate maneuver. Playing Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Meanwhile follow the so far frustrated attempts at “colored” revolution (the others are learning how to disarm the CIA’s NGO army), to get more candidates for the post of “ukraine” in the pacific.

The RAND study points precisely to this “priority”. One more that will lead to actions whose prerequisites are not verified and, therefore, doomed to failure. But as someone, from the US, said some time ago: “there are no more good options”. Only the desperate ones. It reminds one of the last days of the Reich with its search for the “wonder weapons”.

But if the rest of the world has already seen the scenes of the next chapters, here in NATO territory, the corporate media is still in delusional mode, according to which, the world is a US backyard and the collective West is the civilizational reference… It’s like the cliché “Ukraine is winning the war”.

It will be my pleasure to watch a whole crowd of newsmen, analysts, politologists, and other charlatans doing the pin-up… and saying “no one saw this coming”!

Isn’t that what they always do? In a sign of desperation?

And some people still believe in them!

Hugo Dionísio’s Telegram:

https://t.me/canalfactual

A panicked Empire tries to make Russia an ‘offer it can’t refuse’

January 30 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Does US Secretary of State Antony Blinken think a Washington Post op-ed will move Russian Armed Forces Chief Valery Gerasimov to postpone his planned military offensive on Ukraine?

Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat?

By Pepe Escobar

Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.

Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.

So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.

The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.

In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed (behind paywall).

The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.

Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.

‘Please don’t go on the offensive’

The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.

Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”

What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.

The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”

Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.

There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.

This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.

Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.

What the Deep State really wants

Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.

The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.

And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.

It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”

From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”

Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”

The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.

The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.

Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Help! The Beatles to Save America?

January 14, 2023

I need somebody,
Not just anybody,
You know I need someone, help!

So much younger than today,
I never needed anybody’s help in any way,
but now these days are gone,
I’m not so self-assured.
And now I find I’ve changed my mind
And opened up the doors.

In, oh, so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze.
But every now and then
I feel so insecure.
I know that I just need you like
I’ve never done before.

Help me if you can, I’m feeling down,
And I do appreciate you being ’round.
Help me get my feet back on the ground,
Won’t you please, please help me, help me, help me?

The Beatles

The West has lost the Battle of Soledar. 25,000 Ukrainian and western mercenaries lie dead. Artemovsk is about to fall with all its fortifications. Where next?

A limited policing operation all started with the Russian wish to protect its people in two Russian provinces in the far east of the Ukraine. This soon had to be extended to four Russian provinces, two more added from the south-east of the Ukraine, so linking up with the much-persecuted Crimea. That had been Russian until 1954, just as all the east of the Ukraine was Russian until 1922 and the far west Polish, Hungarian and Romanian until 1939 – the Ukraine is a uniquely Communist creation. And then there was the Russian wish to prevent the Ukraine from becoming an American base, specifically for its ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and also to protect the many Russian speakers elsewhere in the Ukraine from hate-filled Nazi persecution of them. The project and the aim were all relatively modest. Then it all changed:

If the West continues to pump the Ukraine full of weaponry out of impotent rage, or a desire to exacerbate the situation…then that means our geographical tasks will move even further from the current line.

Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia

So it all became an operation, forced on Russia by the aggressiveness of Washington, to take back, directly or indirectly, more or less the whole of the Ukraine. This was not because Russia is fighting against the Ukraine, or against the EU, or against NATO, or against ‘the West’, or even against the USA, but against the neocons, who pull the money-strings, in Washington. And so now Russia has to demilitarise all NATO ground forces (cowardly NATO naval and air forces are hiding) and ultimately to denazify the whole Western world. It is actually on its way to doing that. Certain types of NATO equipment are in short supply. And despite strict Western censorship, more and more Western people are realising that the Ukraine, the most corrupt country on earth, is simply not worth a penny of their taxes, let alone billions, let alone living in hunger or cold: ‘Eat or heat’, as they say in the strikebound UK.

What the Western world, which is ruled over by a bunch of neocons in Washington, has never understood, is that this is an existential war for Russia and therefore Russia will fight to the end, if the neocons force it too. And although the neocon elite likes to consider that this is an existential war for the US, it is not, let alone for the peoples of Western Europe. Find a single ordinary Western person who is voluntarily willing to die for the Ukraine. You will not find a single one. (Western mercenaries die only for money, not for the Ukraine). This Western crusade is existential only for the neocon fantasy ideology, that ‘The West is Best’ and that ‘History Has Ended’ (with our triumph). And here there is a problem.

This problem is that the only way the Ukraine can survive is through Western (mainly US) subsidies of over $300 million a day (so it has been week in, week out, for the last eleven months so far). The Ukraine is on life support. This is killing the West, or rather the West is killing itself because this money will never be paid back and every day that passes is another $300 million that will never be paid back.

As we have said, it is only elitist neocon supporters who back the Western war of terror in the Ukraine. They are the sort of wealthier Western people who belong to, or want to belong to out of self-importance, who last March began flying Ukrainian flags. They saw in the neocon operation an anti-Russian crusade to extend Western power, that is, to increase their personal wealth by helping to steal the wealth of the Ukraine and Russia. What some are realising, Geoffrey Sachs and Condoleezza Rice among them, together with Heinrich Kissinger on the fringes, is that you cannot do it. This is a bridge too far. You can only spread the Western mentality among those with a Western mentality.

Just as Western religion never had any profound or long-lasting success in China, India, the Muslim world, Japan, Russia, the Ukraine, Serbia or a whole bunch of Eastern European countries which have always been Orthodox Christian (see Toynbee or Huntingdon), so today’s neocon religion is not supported by seven-eighths of the world. The seven-eighths, the Global South, East and North, have a different mentality because they have different cultures, indeed, different Civilisations. Even in Latin America and Black Africa, Western religion has been transformed by the local people. Their values no longer resemble the original template, indeed, the original template hardly exists any longer in Western countries, which are today renowned for their atheism. Thus, in Kiev, an atheist Jewish ‘President’, appointed by the USA, no doubt for his ability to play the piano with his penis, has banned Christianity. Expect blowback.

‘These days are gone’ for the neocons, they are not so ‘self-assured’, and now they find they’ve ‘changed their minds’, for their ‘independence seems to vanish in the haze’, and ‘they feel so insecure’. We will have to help them ‘get their feet back on the ground’. Once you have realised that the nuclear option is unreal, that you cannot afford to pay out £300 million a day for ever, your only option is retreat. But, practically, how can we help the neocons ‘get their feet back on the ground’, that is, help them to evacuate the Ukraine without their losing face?

Here there is the option of ‘withdrawal’ to your vassals in Western Europe, building a wall across Eastern Europe on the pretext that you are protecting the ‘free’ ‘civilised’ world from the ‘aggressive Muscovite barbarians’. ‘Not an inch back’, can be your slogan. ‘It was that or nuclear war’, you can (falsely) claim. Of course, you may have to accept the loss of the Baltics and/or Moldova and/or Georgia (but they were never really yours anyway), but such is the price of maintaining your ‘purity’ for another generation. That is, until the whole Western house of cards and its ridiculous fake ‘left-right’ Uniparty system, collapses anyway but you can deny that for the moment – that will be someone else’s problem. (As the short-termist Keynes said: ‘In the long term we are all dead anyway).

The more radical option, already suggested by Trump, is to retreat back to the US, in renewed isolationism. ‘Make America Great Again’. ‘America First’. This would be very popular with the much-tried American people, who are faced with an avalanche of problems and neocon debt. ‘We are leaving the European parasites’, to paraphrase Victoria Nuland, ‘to build up our great country, from sea to shining sea’. This time all that stuff about ‘draining the swamp’ could become real. Especially since the swamp was never drained the first time round – in fact it was deepened and extended then. As for the neocons, they could be sent away to Israel, where many of them come from anyway, or at the very least, where they all belong anyway. As for the rest of us, we could all live (relatively) happily ever after. Help!

Orthodox New Year’s Day, 14 January 2023

• Echoes from the first Neocon war in Europe and some music
• Everything upside down
• A Tale of Two Cultures (America and Russia)
• Industrial Warfare Thinking (Andrei Martyanov)
• How General Soleimani kick-started the multipolar world

Not a good strategy (Douglas Macgregor – MUST SEE!)

January 09, 2023

People Power in the Donbass Republics

January 09, 2023

Source

by Francis Lee

It is an open question as to why Putin and the Russian government tolerated the 2014 coup which was blatantly funded and organized by internal and external actors followed by the war in the Donbass. The coup was bought and paid for by the usual suspects – The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) the ubiquitous Mr. Soros (The Open Society Foundation – OSF) and Human Rights Watch (HRW); this in addition to Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt adding their input into the Maidan during the stage-managed ‘revolution’. The shock troops of the coup were bussed in from all points in the west Ukraine to Lviv, then on to the battleground of Kiev and the Maidan. These rightwing ultras were to openly flaunt and use their improvised weapons – usually Molotov cocktails and medieval studded clubs, last used at the battle of Agincourt – against the riot police. The legitimate president, at the time Viktor Yanukovych – was ousted by this illegal show of force and forced to flee Kiev for other places outside the reach of the mob. Poroshenko – one time finance minister of Yanukovych – was thus ‘elected’ as the new President.

The first thing on Poroshenko’s agenda was the war against the Eastern provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk. According to Poroshenko this was going to be a simple ‘police operation’ which would be over in a few hours. The initial phase of the conflict was a sortie by the Ukrainian Army which rolled into Mariupol and began to shoot up the place killing a number of Russian civilians. News of this Ukie incursion began to trickle through to Donetsk and Lugansk where hastily formed local militias began to be created.

However, the significance of the events in the Southeast extended far beyond Ukraine. No sooner than the Donetsk republic was proclaimed, official Moscow let it be understood, in no uncertain terms, that it made no claim to Ukraine’s rebellious provinces. This was neither diplomatic nor a concession to the West; the conflict was far greater than anything the Kremlin found convenient or manageable. Unlike Crimea – where the process was controlled and where, after two or three demonstrations, the transfer of power was carried out by the local elite. But the process in Donetsk and Lugansk had borne witness to the elemental force of a popular movement which simply could not be managed from outside. But this spontaneous political uprising did not go down too well inside the more conservative elements in the Russian political hierarchy and the financial clique whose interests largely lie outside of Russia.

The movement itself was decentralized and rapidly threw up hitherto unknown leaders (such as Alexander Zakharchenko – see below – a heroic figure and leader who was later assassinated in a restaurant off Lenin Square in Donetsk by an unknown assailant who set off the bomb. Born: June 26, 1976, Donetsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Died: August 31, 2018, Pushkin Boulevard, Donetsk, Donetsk People’s Republic/Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine). Zakharchenko had since May 2014 worked as a mine electrician in 2011 to manage the Donetsk branch of the martial arts club and eventually Pan-Slavic nationalist current and militia organization Oplot. And he had remained in situ during the war period 2014-15 and was heavily involved in the conflict.

On the 14 August leadership changed hands in Lugansk, as skirmishes took place inside the city limits between the rebels and Ukrainian Army Units. Again, after a visit to Moscow ‘’Head of Republic’’ Valery Bolotov resigned due to war injuries. His replacement was former defence minister Igor Plonitsky. Locally born the 50-year-old Plonitsky had served as an officer in the Soviet Armed Forces before becoming a dealer in fuel and lubricants during the 1990s, and later, a consumer rights inspector for the provincial administration.

Another resignation at the same time was that of Igor Strelkov. As reported by TASS the DPR Council of Ministers avowed that the defence chief was leaving his post ‘’at his own request’’ and would take up another position. Strelkov, however, vanished from the Don Bass, only to reappear in Russia a few weeks later. His replacement as defence minister was Vladimir Kononov, a Donetsk-born judo instructor and mid-ranking militia commander described by the Interpretermag site ‘’as having a firm political position and organizational skills.’’ (1)

These organizational changes were seemingly made at the behest of Moscow. The goal was evidently to install leaders in the republics who were both more predictable and more attuned to the ways of Moscow officialdom than those they replaced. Whether or not these changes in organizational structures and practise made any difference to the eventual outcome of the war was of necessity a moot point.

It had formulated and developed its agenda as events became unfolded. Absorbing such an organized and active population at a time of growing crisis in Russia itself was hardly advisable. So, the rebel republics had to rely overwhelmingly on their own resources. To the extent permitted by popular support for their cause within Russia, increased by the governments own patriotic propaganda, official Russia surprisingly left them to their own fate – provisionally at least.

However, unofficial Russia had other ideas. Volunteers from Russia began to trickle into the rebel republics, as did arms and food were also smuggled into the two republics. Military training was becoming widespread among the population. It seems an open question as to whether Putin was behind the leadership of the rebel republics, but the ensuing events took on a momentum of their own. The Ukie army was stopped in its tracks at the airport and was then decisively halted at the battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo – this was 2015. But the shelling of the Donbass continued to this day.

See below: Ukrainian Prisoners of War (POWs) captured or surrendered at Debaltsevo 2015. They looked pretty miserable, but who wouldn’t? It’s better than being killed after all.

And so here we are in January 2023 at the present conjuncture. The local war has become global, but that was always going to be the final outcome. The half-finished job (farce) of the Minsk/Normandy format was ultimately to receive its demise from the German/French delegation and the final funeral rites when Frau Merkel spilled the beans. Now that chapter is over, the Republics have finally been brought into Russia proper, and have taken their legitimate position in Russia’s heroic struggle.

But things were not always as unified and expected between Moscow and Donetsk, at least in the early stages of the war. Russia was just emerging from the disastrous period of political, social, and economic collapse. This was due in large part to what was in fact a class struggle between – a fortiori – the domestic Russian globalist neo-liberal agenda which was just as pervasive as it was in the West, if not also more acute than in the western hinterland of the globalist elite. Following the usual period of class struggle the Russian and Liberal intelligentsia had only hatred and contempt for the protesting workers, deriding them as ‘lumpens’ ‘trash’ and ‘hooligans’ and worse of all – Vatniks.

These simple Russian folk were derided to suggest simpletons unswervingly loyal to the state authorities and completely taken in by government propaganda. However, in this sense of course it was the ‘intellectuals’ uncritically parroting even the most absurd Kiev propaganda who deserved to be most regarded as being – Vatnik. Whilst the propaganda services of both Kiev and Moscow lied, the latter did so more recklessly and inventively, showing not the slightest regard for the truth and not even whether the television they showed bore any relation to the commentary. Like all elites in a period of intensified class struggle they hung on to their money, property, political and social contacts.

It would appear that this social-political upheaval was taking on a political class structure – how could it have been otherwise? The open social and political anomalies had been fermenting and the dramatic deterioration of the conditions of life that followed the change of government in Kiev was the last straw. Steep increases in the price of gas and medicines followed the IMF agreement to become a member of the EU, and ultimately NATO, so much so that a political and economic explosion was inevitable. The use of nationalist rhetoric and anti-Russian propaganda in the West, had the reverse effect in the East. The pro-Russian sympathies of the local population nor even the Kiev’s intention to repeal the status of Russian as a ‘regional language’ triggered the revolt. These open social and political anomalies had been gradually fermenting and became dangerously unstable. The dye was caste: war was to follow.

Yegorov Voronov, a resident of Gorlovka wrote on the Ukrainian site: Liva – In English – ‘The Left’.

‘’I find it hard to believe the change in my compatriots. Only six months ago they were simple folk who watched TV and complained about the bad state of the roads and of the communal services. Now they are fighters. In several hours by the provincial administration building, I didn’t meet a single person who’d come from Russia. The people were from Mariupol, Gorlovka, Dzershinsk, Artemovsk, Krasnoarmeysk … those people with whom I ride every day on the bus, stand next to in the queues, and argue with when they leave the door to the stairwell open. They were not the supercilious Kiev middle-class, set aside from the people by their special circumstances but everyday workers. And there is no denying, there are plenty of unemployed in these parts. Here were all the people who for the past month and a half had been ’begged’ in the private offices and state enterprises to take a cut in their miserable wages. So here is another conclusion – the more the wages of the Donbass residents are cut or squeezed today, the more protesters would emerge in the East.’’ (Voronov 2014 translated from Russian)

It would appear that the Donbass peoples’ militias having taken up arms converted themselves into partisan units and actually put the Ukies to flight in 2015. But the war went on with Ukie artillery pounding the Donbass, a policy which was allowed to the present day. During this 8-year period the Donbass was mercilessly targeted by the ukie artillery and suffered some 14000 casualties during that period. It has to be said that Putin and his advisers were perhaps somewhat gradual and deliberative in terms of putting an end to what was basically a massacre from 2014 until 2022 ongoing. But the decision was finally made to enter the war which was forced upon Putin by external factors which needed urgent resolution. By April 2022 Putin had made his move and if the cosmopolitan conservative elements in the Moscow bureaucracy, as well as the financial oligarch high-rollers didn’t like it – well, hard cheese old chap, as we say in the UK.

As the whole drama of the Ukraine/Russia moves into its final stages it became apparent that Ukraine, under its present leadership, was desperately looking for an exit from the imbroglio that it had initially and unwisely set for itself. Ukrainian politicians were a pretty rum bunch: all kleptocrats that had imbibed the neo-liberal weltanschauung and the promise of a golden age to come. Alas it was not to be. Even the corrupt Yanukovych only really became an enemy of the West when he committed the unforgivable sin of refusing to implement an EU/US-counselled austerity programme. Had he acted more like the Romanian leader Nikolai Ceausescu in Romania (1980s) who unwisely eagerly implemented the dreaded IMF structural adjustment policies it seems likely that Yanukovych would have become one of the darlings of the West. Ukrainians looking to the EU for their salvation – even today – are looking back to what was and not what it has now become. What we are bearing witness to are the last remnants of a social model that has been sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. It would appear that those who wished to hitch their horses to the EU cart are always in for a disappointment, not even to say passe.

‘’The aim of the EU and the United States is to transfer public wealth into the hands of private individuals who will be steered by the ‘invisible hand’ (presumably the hand behind the ‘color revolutions’) to seek their gains by selling what they have taken to western investors. Finance is the new mode of warfare, as Michael Hudson notes. We are seeing a grab for finance that in earlier times was just a military option.’’

NOTES

(1) Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism. Edited by Boris Kargalitsky, Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman. Passim.

(2) Seven Roads to Moscow – Lieutenant-Colonel – W.G.F.Jackson MC, BA, R.E. Instructor, Staff College, Camberley, 1948-50, Instructor, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, 1950-53

Die Einsatzgruppen – Death Squads – Eastern Europe: 1941-44

DECEMBER 05, 2022

Source

By Francis Lee

During the Second World War in Europe, particularly in the East, special corps of mobile German extermination units known as “Einsatzgruppen” (literally “operational groups”) were recorded has having exterminated well over one million civilians, primarily in mass shootings in the greater Soviet Union and also included the Baltics, Romania, and Poland.

Whenever Nazi Germany’s army marched East it immediately occupied and ethnically cleansed and secured the newly seized territories. Their principal tasks were to identify and neutralize potential enemies to German rule, seizing important sites, preventing sabotage, recruiting collaborators, and establishing intelligence networks. The Einsatzgruppen – see the glossary below – was principally charged with this grisly task. They also killed some ‘unreliable’ civilians who were perceived as their enemies. Together with Einsatzgruppen various other units included the Waffen SS, Order Police, and local collaborators who ‘liquidated’ thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of members of the Polish elites.

With the start of Hitler’s “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly increased. The main targets were the Communist Party and Soviet state officials, Roma, and above all Jews of any age or gender. Under the cover of war and using the pretext of military necessity, the Einsatzgruppen viewed this term in the glossary organized and helped to carry out the shooting of more than half a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, in the first nine months of the war.

The 3,000 personnel of all four Einsatzgruppen groups viewed this term in the glossary and did not conduct these killings alone. Units of the Waffen SS, Order Police, Wehrmacht, allied Romanian forces and local collaborators willingly gave them aid and succour. The latter collaborators helped to identify victims as well as kill them. Many of the killers and victims actually knew one another as neighbours and colleagues. For example, over two days in September 1941, a small detachment of Einsatzgruppe C along with larger units of Waffen SS, Order Police and Ukrainian auxiliaries conducted a mass shooting of Jews in Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), a ravine outside Kyiv (Kiev). According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. When occupied territories came under civilian control, stationary offices of the SS and Police replaced the Einsatzgruppen and continued to conduct mass shootings.

One particular case involved a family caught up in the general chaos. The daughter – a girl named, Frima – and her family were confined in a Jewish ghetto; in which the Nazis used her father as an interpreter. He later perished. By pretending not to be Jews, Frima, her mother, and sister escaped a German mobile killing unit massacre. They were later discovered and jailed. Again, her mother devised an escape. Frima’s mother and sister were smuggled to Romania, while Frima wandered in search of safekeeping until her mother could arrange to smuggle her out. In Romania, they were reunited and liberated. As cited in the United States – see below.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. Author(s): United States Washington, DC

Often referred to as an Aktion, a massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or ordered to report to a central destination. The victims were then marched or transported to the killing site. If a mass grave had not already been dug, the victims were forced to dig one. They were stripped of clothes and valuables and driven in groups to the pit. The Einsatzgruppen view this term in the glossary and their assistants either shot the victims at the edge so that they fell in or forced them into the grave to be shot. Friends and families often had to watch their loved ones die before them.

The mass shootings were resource-intensive, requiring many shooters and escort guards as well as guns, ammunition, and transport. Concerns about the inefficiency of the shootings and their psychological impact on the shooters led to the development of special vans outfitted with engines that pumped carbon monoxide into sealed passenger compartments. Jews were packed into the compartments, then driven to a mass grave, and asphyxiated during the journey. It took much longer to kill very large groups of victims with the gas vans, however. The Einsatzgruppen view this term in the glossary where personnel were required to remove bodies and clean the compartments. Throughout the German occupation of seized Soviet territories, mass shootings continued to be the preferred method of murdering Jews. At least 1.5 million and possibly more than 2 million Holocaust victims died in mass shootings or gas vans in Soviet territory.

Latvia?

Barbaric as the German atrocities were, they were to be aided and abetted by elements of the local indigenous populations. Particularly in the Baltics and Ukraine.

‘’They say that time is a great healer, but to the Jewish community in Latvia, the events of 1941 will never be forgotten.  As many as 70,000 were murdered, and the Museum “Jews in Latvia” commemorates this terrible time in Latvian history.  But the Museum does more than this and tells the story of the Jewish Community from its inception to the present day.’’ (Phillip Houseley – 2018).

Lithuania?

‘’Almost all Jews living in Lithuania were annihilated from 1941 until 1944, but there is a reluctance among Lithuanians to discuss the collaboration with the Nazis that enabled slaughter on such a massive scale. Participation – mainly by the Lithuanian police in Holocaust crimes – is acknowledged to have occurred but does not attract the attention it warrants. More references are made to the few locals who saved Jews and can be numbered among the righteous among the nations than to the vastly larger number of Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. Collaborators are largely perceived as “victims” in the national discourse.’’

Bar-Ilana University (Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies)

­Estonia

The Jewish community was amongst the first to be rounded up in accordance with the General plan Ost (East) which required the removal of 50% of Estonian citizens. With the invasion of the Baltics, it was the intention of the Nazi government to use the Baltic countries as their main area of mass genocide.

Consequently, Jews from countries outside the Baltics were shipped there to be exterminated. Out of the approximately 4,300 Jews in Estonia before the war, between 950 and 1,000 were entrapped by the Nazis. An estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having been deported to camps there from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. There have been 7 known ethnic Estonians—Ralf Gerrets, Ain-Ervin Mere Jaan Viik, Juhan Jüriste, Karl Linnas, Aleksander Laak, and Ervin Viks—who have faced trials for crimes against humanity. Since the reestablishment of Estonian independence, the Estonian International Commission for Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity has been established. Markers were put in place for the 60th anniversary of the mass executions that were carried out at the Lagedi, Vaivara and Klooga (Kalevi-Liva) camps in September 1944.

Ukraine

The Dynamic Duo:

Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) Statue in Ternopil

Leader of the (OUN-B) Bandera remains even today a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with many Ukrainians principally in the West of the country – hailing him as a role model hero, martyred liberation fighter, whilst other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east of the Dnieper condemn him as a fascist, Nazi collaborator who was, together with his followers, responsible for the large-scale massacres of up to 100,000 Polish, Jewish and Russian civilians in western Ukraine in 1943-44. Bandera was assassinated by a KGB hit-man in Munich in 1959.

Looking back the name Bandera initially became synonymous with Ukrainian nationalism during the Soviet era. Stephan Bandera was born in 1909 in the town of Trostianec, near Stryj. His father was a Greek Catholic priest. He attended elementary school in Sokal and high school in Stryj. While still in high school he became a member of UVO, the veterans’ organization of Ukrainian nationalists from the First World War. He became commander of the OUN for Western Ukraine, and Poland. There is little doubt that Stefan Bandera was an extreme rightist in his political outlook. In 1934, he and confederate Mikola Lebed planned and organized the assassination of Pieracky, the Polish Minister of the Interior, accused by the Ukrainians of anti-Ukrainian acts. He was first sentenced to death and then the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. His trial took place in 1935 after which he was committed to the Holy Cross jail where he remained until 1939. It is alleged that his sentence was commuted to avoid an uprising of Ukrainian nationalists in Eastern Poland and the Ukraine.

The circumstances surrounding Bandera’s escape or release from Polish prison in 1939 are not clearly known. Once free, Bandera resumed his leadership of OUN in the homeland. After the invasion of Poland (1939), the OUN collaborated with Germany against the Poles and, later, against the Soviet Union.

In early summer 1940 the OUN split, and Bandera became the overall chief of the greater part of the organization. For some time, the OUN was composed of two factions, both claiming the name. The dissident group, comprising about 80 percent of the organization, was called OUN-Bandera [OUN(B)] or the Bandera group. The larger faction OUN-B was headed by Stefan Bandera and the smaller faction OUN-M (headed by Andre Melnik. Both OUN factions created their own special forces units, named “Rolland” and “Nachtigall.”

Realizing that the aspiration for national independence was uppermost in the minds of a majority of Ukrainians, the Third Reich promised at the beginning of World War II that the Ukrainians would be freed from Soviet domination and could found a Ukrainian state. When the Germans attacked Russia, many members of the OUN followed the Germans’ advance eastward. Bandera remained in Cracow.

A “Ukrainian State” was founded by Bandera on 10 June 1941. The proclamation of the “state” took place in an atmosphere of great solemnity, with Hitler’s representatives participating. The German occupation forces at the time needed agents and informers who were conversant with conditions in Poland and could help the Hitlerite invaders. They could find no better men for the job than Bandera and his followers. Bandera launched the campaign which was to make him master of the OUN. To achieve this, he found it necessary, first, to compromise the old leadership headed by Melnyk. A simple denunciation to the Gestapo was sufficient to cause persons objectionable to Bandera to be arrested and liquidated at his order.

Over 25,000 Poles, Jews and Russians were destroyed in a single operation at the border of the Carpathian Ukraine. The Hungarian gendarmes drove these Jews out from the area which had been occupied by Hungary with Hitler’s consent. At the border, they were received by “special” elements of the Bandera militia, which drove them to unknown parts, destroying all of them en route. Altogether, during the 5 weeks of its existence, the Bandera’s “state” destroyed over 5,000 Ukrainians, 15,000 Jews, and several thousand Poles.

The “Ukrainian State” of Stepan Bandera ended its short but ignominious existence in August 1941, when it was announced in Lvov that Western Ukraine had been incorporated as the “District of Galicia” in the “General Governorship” (occupied Poland).

And when Bandera had done his duty, he and some of his assistants were dispatched to a concentration camp. The Gestapo had its own candidates for the posts of gauleiters and governors of the Ukraine. At any rate, Bandera was taken to Berlin and placed under house arrest there. He was shortly transferred to the Prinz Albrecht Strasse Gestapo jail reserved for important political prisoners. In 1942 Bandera and several other OUN leaders were transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Against the Soviets – 1943-1945

In 1943 the OUN(B) quit the collaboration game and turned on the Germans in an effort to establish an independent Ukraine free of Nazi or Soviet control. The Nazis did not recognize the government created by the part of OUN headed by Stepan Bandera on 10 June 1943. At the beginning of 1943 the OUN(b) started to create UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army – led by Roman Shukeyvich (see below) – that started the underground struggle when the Red Army entered the territory of the Western Ukraine. At all stages of UPA existence, the Soviet regime with all its political, military, and security structures (partisan, army, NKVD units, and internal forces), remained the number one enemy of the Ukrainian nationalists.

The population was still resentful for the recent genocidal famine in Ukraine. The war between UPA and Soviet military and security structures coincided in time with the war of the United Nations (including the Soviet Union) against the fascist bloc, although these wars are entirely different by nature and origin.

During the war years, at the time that Bandera was incarcerated in a German concentration camp, there sprang up in the Ukraine a number of fighting units. Some of these units united under the banners of Taras BULBA-BOROVETS, OUN/Melnyk and OUN/Bandera. Since it was apparent to all that there should be a unified command, all three commands tried to unite, but OUN/Bandera, being possibly strongest in number, decided that it should lead all others. It was at this time that there was considerable fratricide committed. Rumour has it that the entire general staff of Tares BULBA-BOROVETS was liquidated by OUN/Bandera, as well as a number of those who backed Colonel Andrew Melnyk – among the latter two OUN/Melnyk leaders, STSIBORSKY and SENYK-HRYBIVSKY.

Roman Shukeyvich (1907-1959)

The controversial (sic!) Ukrainian national hero (sic!). The statue below was a monument to Roman Shukhevych military Commander in Chief to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Stepan Bandera, however, was the political wing of the movement the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) who along with Bandera was assassinated by unknown, possibly Soviet assassins.

Shukeyvich’s statue has stood at the entrance of the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in North Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, since the mid-1970s. Shukhevych is lionized by some for his fight for Ukrainian independence against Poland, the Soviet Union and later Germany. But critics of the monument say it glorifies a Nazi henchman who sided with Germany in hopes of winning independence for Ukraine.

The Ukrianian diaspora is still in evidence and in high places in the Ukraine. Canadian Foreign Secretary, ­Christiya Freeland is a prominent critic of Russia who was banned from the country in 2014. She happens also to be a friend of Victoria Nuland, and both are passionate supporters of her coup in Ukraine. Ms Freeland is co-chair of the Lima Group which is apparently dedicated to the overthrow of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

In the somewhat murky political background of Ms Freeland, she had long since been an advocate of militant Ukrainian nationalism; this followed very much in the family tradition. Some interesting facts dug out by some Polish and Australian journalists investigating past and present Ukrainian threats to Polish sovereignty in Galicia-Ukraine. “This Canadian statement is discreditable,  not only for its ignorance of the ‘surprises’  in the Polish and German records of World War II.  It’s also a declaration of comfortable complacency in not investigating how much Freeland aims to revive the takeover of Polish Galicia, with Canadian money and arms, which her Nazi grandfather tried with German money and arms.”

See Further: German military records have been found in a Polish government archive in Warsaw revealing that, Michael Chomiak maternal grandfather of Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, volunteered to serve in the German invasion of Poland long before the German Army attacked the Soviet Union and invaded Ukraine.’’

John Helmer

The German Army (Officers) reaches Ukraine 1941. They seem to have been welcomed by most of the local population in Vinnitsiya, Ukraine.

There is a whole gallery of gruesome pictures of native populations in Eastern Europe, the worst being carried out by local militias. See below, the ‘last Jew in Vinnytsia’ Ukraine murdered by the local Ukrianian militia.

See Rare Historical Photographs

The above picture is not untypical. There were worse, but for the sake of decency and the deceased’s family I declined to publish them.

About Saving Face: Some Advice to Volodymyr Zelensky

November 28, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

It matters not how much you, gentlemen, bend down before them,
You will never gain Europe’s recognition:
You will always be for them,
Not servants, but serfs of their enlightened disposition.
F.I. Tyutchev, Russian diplomat and poet, May 1867

To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.
Henry Kissinger

Ditching the Ukraine

It is now dawning on the US elite that they totally underestimated Russia in all respects. For instance, on 25 March 2014 the arrogant Obama contemptuously called Russia ‘a regional power, threatening others out of weakness’ (sic!). (Clearly, he was talking about the USA). As a result, blinded by hubris, some in the US are now admitting that the Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, is a dead duck, the game is simply no longer worth the candle. Apart from being a black hole for Western money and military equipment, the Ukraine is no longer the problem. It is a sideshow, a distraction, a mere symptom of something far more important. The real problem is what is now happening worldwide under Russian leadership – the ending of the unipolar world, of US global hegemony, camouflaged beneath the more innocent-sounding term ‘globalism’.

Following Russia’s decision and ability to stand up to the world’s bully, the whole Non-Western world is now also standing up to him. For example, at the recent G20 meeting in Indonesia, the debate was not about the Ukraine, but about whether or not to continue to accept American Fascist rule (‘the rules-based international order’). All the Latin American and African and four Asian countries said no, it’s finished, the world is now multipolar. Taiwan will inevitably be Chinese and soon – and wait till Chinese troops appear in Mesopotamia to take control of Iraqi oil and gas and rebuild that tragic country. Freedom beckons. Long-deluded Western elitists must be shocked: other ‘regional powers’ are now also standing up to the bully. Perhaps also out of weakness? Zelensky must have suspected that his boss, until now the self-imagined master of the universe, is going to get rid of him. He is a loser and the Yanks cannot stand losers.

As the US realises that the free nations of the world are turning against it, it will not hesitate to blame the Kiev regime. The US must save face. Kiev has been warned: it will have to start negotiating with Russia again. Zelensky had better plan his escape now, because Ukrainians will not forgive him for stringing them along with a pack of lies. Regardless of Zelensky’s delusional assertions that there will be no negotiations with Russia and that it will re-occupy Russian territories, including the Crimea, there are three reasons for him to throw in the towel now, before it all gets much, much worse.

Three Reasons To Surrender Now

Firstly, Russia has now reluctantly moved closer to the US ‘shock and awe’ strategy of destroying infrastructure, as the US did in Germany and Japan (World War II) and then Serbia and Iraq. Power stations and power networks, bridges and ‘decision centres’, such as certain government buildings in Kiev are being targeted. Russia is one or two mass missile strikes away from the knock-out blow which will disable the Ukrainian electricity, water and rail systems. With 50% of Ukrainian electricity infrastructure knocked out by the first three strikes on the electricity grid, demonstrations are starting against the deteriorating situation, with Zelensky sending in the hated and dreaded Ukrainian Secret Police, the SBU, to break them up. He is also banning coverage of them in his heavily-censored media. The electricity system has entered a stage of ‘arbitrary and uncontrolled imbalance’. Ukrainians have been told to leave the country for the winter. Where to? Who wants them anyway? And does this include the military too?

Secondly, once the infrastructure has been incapacitated, Russia’s 380,000 regular and newly mobilised troops will be fully incorporated into the Allied forces in eastern Ukraine. Even without them, Russian forces are continuing to advance in the Donbass. A winter offensive by some half a million troops will make huge gains on the whole front, advancing hundreds of kilometres and multiplying Kiev’s – and NATO’s – staggering losses. After success here, President Putin’s generals have the option of moving a serious force into the western Ukraine from Belarus in order to cut off NATO supply routes from Poland. This could easily lead to the total collapse of the already ravaged Ukrainian forces and their mercenaries. Now Russia is going all the way to Lvov and the Polish border. It has been forced to. The Kiev regime has brought it on itself. All Russia wanted was security for the Crimea and the Donbass and a neutral, non-nuclear Ukraine. It could all have been so simple.

Thirdly, Western countries, including even the brainless Stoltenberg, is suffering from Ukraine fatigue. The Ukrainian flags have nearly all come down in Europe. Support has waned as reality has dawned. NATO countries’ arms stocks have been seriously depleted and strikes and ensuing social chaos have appeared in Europe, This the result of double-digit inflation and economic recession, brought on by suicidal Western sanctions, yes, those ‘against Russia’ (!). ‘We are cold and hungry in our own country because you gave everything to that bunch of losers in Kiev and the Ukrainian freeloaders you invaded our country with’. The foul-mouthed thug Nuland has achieved her aim in Europe. All this makes Russia the strategic winner and is forcing the US/UK/EU to call on Zelensky to talk again. The British financier PM Sunak (who cares little for and knows even less about politics) used a modest British aid package, announced during his recent visit to Kiev, to tell Zelensky that bankrupt London can no longer pay. Kiev must negotiate with Moscow. Following this, there has been a delay in the fourth round of missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. President Putin is waiting to see if Zelensky will cave in and start realistic talks before Russia unleashes the last assault on Ukrainian infrastructure and the winter offensive.

Ditching Zelensky

At least some in the Biden regime are realising (though not Biden himself, he is in no fit state to realise anything – a clear case of elder abuse) that they are going to have to drop the Jewish billionaire as the fall-guy for the Ukraine’s defeat. Just as they have done to countless Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian tinpot dictators and gangsters in past decades, the US will also do the same to him in his Monsanto/Cargill banana republic. Can Zelensky still entertain any illusions about it? Of course, the US will deny that the war in the Ukraine was ever between the US and Russia and declare it was only ever ‘an internal conflict’ between the Ukraine and Russia. (Ukraine only supplied the cannon fodder for its transatlantic masters, who have controlled the country since their coup in 2014).

Ukraine’s former CIA asset, the actor Zelensky, has now acted up. The Ukrainian missile strike on Poland and the Ukrainian President’s insistence that it was a Russian strike, despite the clear evidence to the contrary, has hit Zelensky’s credibility. The intentional Ukrainian false flag strike on Polish/NATO territory, designed to provoke NATO or at least pathetic Poland into entering the war, is a pathetic embarrassment. Even compared to all of Zelensky’s other ridiculous staged false flags, like Bucha, which venal Western journalists were paid to report, this one has gone too far. The West is getting fed up with Zelensky’s antics. A bullet in the head is much cheaper than continuing to subsidise this clown.

Some are waking up to Zelensky, who is willing to unleash nuclear war in order to avoid negotiating. Some may now even understand that his crazy claims that President Putin always wanted to occupy all the Ukraine and restore the USSR, if not conquer all of Europe, are fairy-stories. These stories are told by Kiev to Western infants only in order to get military and financial aid and above all to draw NATO into the war. (The half-American Churchill spent all of 1941 trying to get the US into Britain’s war against Germany; unlike Zelensky, Churchill succeeded by emphasising his racial compatibility and dangling the Pacific Ocean carrot in front of the Yankees. Zelensky cannot offer either of those). President Putin has clearly stated on more than one occasion that: ‘He who does not regret the USSR has no heart, but he who wants to restore it has no brain’. A desire to restore the failed Soviet Union is a Western propaganda myth used by arms merchants and lying politicians to justify their greed and ambition.

Three Reasons To Run Now

Since NATO has categorically refused to send troops into the Ukraine and since there is no such thing as a ‘coalition of the willing’, apart from a few Polish and Baltic fanatics who are currently being wiped out as mercenaries in the Ukraine, what can Zelensky do? He could urge the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, General Zaluzhny, to open a last (yes, last) offensive in Donetsk or Zaporozhie in order to reboot support from the West. However, General Zaluzhny is fed up with sending his troops to commit suicide. He is, after all, a professional military man. Zelensky, on the other hand, is a White House court jester, who cares only about his own survival. Zaluzhny has other considerations. Here there is potential for a coup d’etat, a palace revolt in Kiev.

On the one hand, the self-deluded and murderous Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine who surround Zelensky and were all given power by the US, will not tolerate surrender. On the other hand, ordinary cold and hungry Ukrainians will ask why was not all of this avoided in the first place by agreeing to Ukrainian neutrality and fulfilling the Minsk 2 promises with their Russian brothers? (A good question, which should be asked of all the Western leaders who also rejected it). So Zelensky is stuck between the Neo-Nazis and the moderate Ukrainian people, between a rock and a hard place. It is lose-lose for him. Russians do not hate Ukrainians, they are brothers. But they do hate Nazis. They are enemies. The Nazis can expect no quarter from the Russians and they know it. The USSR cleared out its part of Germany of Nazis, liberating their German brothers. It is the same now in the Ukraine. With the Russian liberation of the whole of the Ukraine (not originally intended by Russia, but now necessary), a new wave of Ukrainian ‘refugees’ is going to hit Western Europe, maybe even before Christmas. This could be the last straw for a Europe full of refugees from other equally stupid and unnecessary wars of the US Empire: Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, Libyans, Albanians and now Ukrainians. Europe cannot take it any more. It is collapsing in waves of social unrest and even Britannia cannot rule those waves.

The clueless Stoltenberg (him again) has declared that the defeat of the Ukraine means (yet another) defeat for NATO. Actually, the superfluous NATO was long ago defeated, but Stoltenberg is too clueless to have seen the writing on the wall and join the long queues of now unemployed ex-slaves of the US, Afghan and Iraqi interpreters among them. The US and its NATO vassals must now backtrack. Some statement like: ‘We were let down by those vodka-drinking surrender-monkey Ukrainians (what can you expect from those Slav subhumans?), but we have won the greatest victory in our history because we have triumphed in stopping the brutal Russian beast at the Polish border. Mission accomplished’. That would do the job. The US and its vassals cannot save face, but, since they only care about PR, they can at least pretend to save face – by blaming Zelensky. They could, conveniently, have him assassinated, so he does not tell the truth about what has really been happening behind the scenes over the last few years (he knows far too much), blaming it on ‘extremists’ and making him into a new Jewish martyr. If I were Zelensky, I would leave for Tel Aviv today. Does the Ukraine have any planes left?

Germany’s position in America’s New World Order

November 02, 2022

Source

by Michael Hudson

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhettoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany. As Europe’s most advanced industrial economy, German steel, chemicals, machinery, automotives and other consumer goods are the most highly dependent on imports of Russian gas, oil and metals from aluminum to titanium and palladium. Yet despite two Nord Stream pipelines built to provide Germany with low-priced energy, Germany has been told to cut itself off from Russian gas and de-industrialize. This means the end of its economic preeminence. The key to GDP growth in Germany, as in other countries, is energy consumption per worker.

These anti-Russian sanctions make today’s New Cold War inherently anti-German. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has said that Germany should replace low-priced Russian pipeline gas with high-priced U.S. LNG gas. To import this gas, Germany will have to spend over $5 billion quickly to build port capacity to handle LNG tankers. The effect will be to make German industry uncompetitive. Bankruptcies will spread, employment will decline, and Germany’s pro-NATO leaders will impose a chronic depression and falling living standards.

Most political theory assumes that nations will act in their own self-interest. Otherwise they are satellite countries, not in control of their own fate. Germany is subordinating its industry and living standards to the dictates of U.S. diplomacy and the self-interest of America’s oil and gas sector. It is doing this voluntarily – not because of military force but out of an ideological belief that the world economy should be run by U.S. Cold War planners.

Sometimes it is easier to understand today’s dynamics by stepping away from one’s own immediate situation to look at historical examples of the kind of political diplomacy that one sees splitting today’s world. The closest parallel that I can find is medieval Europe’s fight by the Roman papacy against German kings – the Holy Roman Emperors – in the 13^th century. That conflict split Europe along lines much like those of today. A series of popes excommunicated Frederick II and other German kings and mobilized allies to fight against Germany and its control of southern Italy and Sicily.

Western antagonism against the East was incited by the Crusades (1095-1291), just as today’s Cold War is a crusade against economies threatening U.S. dominance of the world. The medieval war against Germany was over who should control Christian Europe: the papacy, with the popes becoming worldly emperors, or secular rulers of individual kingdoms by claiming the power to morally legitimize and accept them.

Medieval Europe’s analogue to America’s New Cold War against China and Russia was the Great Schism in 1054. Demanding unipolar control over Christendom, Leo IX excommunicated the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and the entire Christian population that belonged to it. A single bishopric, Rome, cut itself off from the entire Christian world of the time, including the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem.

This break-away created a political problem for Roman diplomacy: How to hold all the Western European kingdoms under its control and claim the right for financial subsidy from them. That aim required subordinating secular kings to papal religious authority. In 1074, Gregory VII, Hildebrand, announced 27 Papal Dictates outlining the administrative strategy for Rome to lock in its power over Europe.

These papal demands are strikingly parallel to today’s U.S. diplomacy. In both cases military and worldly interests require a sublimation in the form of an ideological crusading spirit to cement the sense of solidarity that any system of imperial domination requires. The logic is timeless and universal.

The Papal Dictates were radical in two major ways. First of all, they elevated the bishop of Rome above all other bishoprics, creating the modern papacy. Clause 3 ruled that the pope alone had the power of investiture to appoint bishops or to depose or reinstate them. Reinforcing this, Clause 25 gave the right of appointing (or deposing) bishops to the pope, not to local rulers. And Clause 12 gave the pope the right to depose emperors, following Clause 9, obliging “all princes to kiss the feet of the Pope alone” in order to be deemed legitimate rulers.

Likewise today, U.S. diplomats claim the right to name who should be recognized as a nation’s head of state. In 1953 they overthrew Iran’s elected leader and replaced him with the Shah’s military dictatorship. That principle gives U.S. diplomats the right to sponsor “color revolutions” for regime-change, such as their sponsorship of Latin American military dictatorships creating client oligarchies to serve U.S. corporate and financial interests. The 2014 coup in Ukraine is just the latest exercise of this U.S. right to appoint and depose leaders.

More recently, U.S. diplomats have appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s head of state instead of its elected president, and turned over that country’s gold reserves to him. President Biden has insisted that Russia must remove Putin and put a more pro-U.S. leader in his place. This “right” to select heads of state has been a constant in U.S. policy spanning its long history of political meddling in European political affairs since World War II.

The second radical feature of the Papal Dictates was their exclusion of all ideology and policy that diverged from papal authority. Clause 2 stated that only the Pope could be called “Universal.” Any disagreement was, by definition, heretical. Clause 17 stated that no chapter or book could be considered canonical without papal authority.

A similar demand as is being made by today’s U.S.-sponsored ideology of financialized and privatized “free markets,” meaning deregulation of government power to shape economies in interests other than those of U.S.-centered financial and corporate elites.

The demand for universality in today’s New Cold War is cloaked in the language of “democracy.” But the definition of democracy in today’s New Cold War is simply “pro-U.S.,” and specifically neoliberal privatization as the U.S.-sponsored new economic religion. This ethic is deemed to be “science,” as in the quasi-Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences. That is the modern euphemism for neoliberal Chicago-School junk economics, IMF austerity programs and tax favoritism for the wealthy.

The Papal Dictates spelt out a strategy for locking in unipolar control over secular realms. They asserted papal precedence over worldly kings, above all over Germany’s Holy Roman Emperors. Clause 26 gave popes authority to excommunicate whomever was “not at peace with the Roman Church.” That principle implied the concluding Claus 27, enabling the pope to “absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.” This encouraged the medieval version of “color revolutions” to bring about regime change.

What united countries in this solidarity was an antagonism to societies not subject to centralized papal control – the Moslem Infidels who held Jerusalem, and also the French Cathars and anyone else deemed to be a heretic. Above all there was hostility toward regions strong enough to resist papal demands for financial tribute.

Today’s counterpart to such ideological power to excommunicate heretics resisting demands for obedience and tribute would be the World Trade Organization, World Bank and IMF dictating economic practices and setting “conditionalities” for all member governments to follow, on pain of U.S. sanctions – the modern version of excommunication of countries not accepting U.S. suzerainty. Clause 19 of the Dictates ruled that the pope could be judged by no one – just as today, the United States refuses to subject its actions to rulings by the World Court. Likewise today, U.S. dictates via NATO and other arms (such as the IMF and World Bank) are expected to be followed by U.S. satellites without question. As Margaret Thatcher said of her neoliberal privatization that destroyed Britain’s public sector, There Is No Alternative (TINA).

My point is to emphasize the analogy with today’s U.S. sanctions against all countries not following its own diplomatic demands. Trade sanctions are a form of excommunication. They reverse the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia’s principle that made each country and its rulers independent from foreign meddling. President Biden characterizes U.S. interference as ensuring his new antithesis between “democracy” and “autocracy.” By democracy he means a client oligarchy under U.S. control, creating financial wealth by reducing living standards for labor, as opposed to mixed public/private economies aiming at promoting living standards and social solidarity.

As I have mentioned, by excommunicating the Orthodox Church centered in Constantinople and its Christian population, the Great Schism created the fateful religious dividing line that has split “the West” from the East for the past millennium. That split was so important that Vladimir Putin cited it as part of his September 30, 2022 speech describing today’s break away from the U.S. and NATO centered Western economies.

The 12^th and 13^th centuries saw Norman conquerors of England, France and other countries, along with German kings, protest repeatedly, be excommunicated repeatedly, yet ultimately succumb to papal demands. It took until the 16^th century for Martin Luther, Zwingli and Henry VIII finally to create a Protestant alternative to Rome, making Western Christianity multi-polar.

Why did it take so long? The answer is that the Crusades provided an organizing ideological gravity. That was the medieval analogy to today’s New Cold War between East and West. The Crusades created a spiritual focus of “moral reform” by mobilizing hatred against “the other” – the Moslem East, and increasingly Jews and European Christian dissenters from Roman control. That was the medieval analogy to today’s neoliberal “free market” doctrines of America’s financial oligarchy and its hostility to China, Russia and other nations not following that ideology. In today’s New Cold War, the West’s neoliberal ideology is mobilizing fear and hatred of “the other,” demonizing nations that follow an independent path as “autocratic regimes.” Outright racism is fostered toward entire peoples, as evident in the Russophobia and Cancel Culture currently sweeping the West.

Just as Western Christianity’s multi-polar transition required the 16^th century’s Protestant alternative, the Eurasian heartland’s break from the bank-centered NATO West must be consolidated by an alternative ideology regarding how to organize mixed public/private economies and their financial infrastructure.

Medieval churches in the West were drained of their alms and endowments to contribute Peter’s Pence and other subsidy to the papacy for the wars it was fighting against rulers who resisted papal demands. England played the role of major victim that Germany plays today. Enormous English taxes were levied ostensibly to finance the Crusades were diverted to fight Frederick II, Conrad and Manfred in Sicily. That diversion was financed by papal bankers from northern Italy (Lombards and Cahorsins), and became royal debts passed down throughout the economy. England’s barons waged a civil war against Henry II in the 1260s, ending his complicity in sacrificing the economy to papal demands.

What ended the papacy’s power over other countries was the ending of its war against the East. When the Crusaders lost Acre, the capital of Jerusalem in 1291, the papacy lost its control over Christendom. There was no more “evil” to fight, and the “good” had lost its center of gravity and coherence. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“the Fair”) seized the Church’s great military banking order’s wealth, that of the Templars in the Paris Temple. Other rulers also nationalized the Templars, and monetary systems were taken out of the hands of the Church. Without a common enemy defined and mobilized by Rome, the papacy lost its unipolar ideological power over Western Europe.

The modern equivalent to the rejection of the Templars and papal finance would be for countries to withdraw from America’s New Cold War. They would reject the dollar standard and the U.S. banking and financial system. that is happening as more and more countries see Russia and China not as adversaries but as presenting great opportunities for mutual economic advantage.

The broken promise of mutual gain between Germany and Russia

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 promised an end to the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, Germany was reunified, and American diplomats promised an end to NATO, because a Soviet military threat no longer existed. Russian leaders indulged in the hope that, as President Putin expressed it, a new pan-European economy would be created from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Germany in particular was expected to take the lead in investing in Russia and restructuring its industry along more efficient lines. Russia would pay for this technology transfer by supplying gas and oil, along with nickel, aluminum, titanium and palladium.

There was no anticipation that NATO would be expanded to threaten a New Cold War, much less that it would back Ukraine, recognized as the most corrupt kleptocracy in Europe, into being led by extremist parties identifying themselves by German Nazi insignia.

How do we explain why the seemingly logical potential of mutual gain between Western Europe and the former Soviet economies turned into a sponsorship of oligarchic kleptocracies. The Nord Stream pipeline’s destruction capsulizes the dynamics in a nutshell. For almost a decade a constant U.S. demand has been for Germany to reject its reliance on Russian energy. These demands were opposed by Gerhardt Schroeder, Angela Merkel and German business leaders. They pointed to the obvious economic logic of mutual trade of German manufactures for Russian raw materials.

The U.S. problem was how to stop Germany from approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Victoria Nuland, President Biden and other U.S. diplomats demonstrated that the way to do that was to incite a hatred of Russia. The New Cold War was framed as a new Crusade. That was how George W. Bush had described America’s attack on Iraq to seize its oil wells. The U.S.-sponsored 2014 coup created a puppet Ukrainian regime that has spent eight years bombing of the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces. NATO thus incited a Russian military response. The incitement was successful, and the desired Russian response was duly labeled an unprovoked atrocity. Its protection of civilians was depicted in the NATO-sponsored media as being so offensive as to deserve the trade and investment sanctions that have been imposed since February. That is what a Crusade means.

The result is that the world is splitting in two camps: the U.S.-centered NATO, and the emerging Eurasian coalition. One byproduct of this dynamic has been to leave Germany unable to pursue the economic policy of mutually advantageous trade and investment relations with Russia (and perhaps also China). German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is going to China this week to demand that it dismantle is public sector and stops subsidizing its economy, or else Germany and Europe will impose sanctions on trade with China. There is no way that China could meet this ridiculous demand, any more than the United States or any other industrial economy would stop subsidizing their own computer-chip and other key sectors.^[1] The German Council on Foreign Relations is a neoliberal “libertarian” arm of NATO demanding German de-industrialization and dependency on the United States for its trade, excluding China, Russia and their allies. This promises to be the final nail in Germany’s economic coffin.

Another byproduct of America’s New Cold War has been to end any international plan to stem global warming. A keystone of U.S. economic diplomacy is for its oil companies and those of its NATO allies to control the world’s oil and gas supply – that is, to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels. That is what the NATO war in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine was about. It is not as abstract as “Democracies vs. Autocracies.” It is about the U.S. ability to harm other countries by disrupting their access to energy and other basic needs.

Without the New Cold War’s “good vs. evil” narrative, U.S. sanctions will lose their raison d’etre in this U.S. attack on environmental protection, and on mutual trade between Western Europe and Russia and China. That is the context for today’s fight in Ukraine, which is to be merely the first step in the anticipated 20 year fight by the US to prevent the world from becoming multipolar. This process, will lock Germany and Europe into dependence on the U.S. supplies of LNG.

The trick is to try and convince Germany that it is dependent on the United States for its military security. What Germany really needs protection from is the U.S. war against China and Russia that is marginalizing and “Ukrainianizing” Europe.

There have been no calls by Western governments for a negotiated end to this war, because no war has been declared in Ukraine. The United States does not declare war anywhere, because that would require a Congressional declaration under the U.S. Constitution. So U.S. and NATO armies bomb, organize color revolutions, meddle in domestic politics (rendering the 1648 Westphalia agreements obsolete), and impose the sanctions that are tearing Germany and its European neighbors apart.

How can negotiations “end” a war that either has no declaration of war, and is a long-term strategy of total unipolar world domination?

The answer is that no ending can come until an alternative to the present U.S.-centered set of international institutions is replaced. That requires the creation of new institutions reflecting an alternative to the neoliberal bank-centered view that economies should be privatized with central planning by financial centers. Rosa Luxemburg characterized the choice as being between socialism and barbarism. I have sketched out the political dynamics of an alternative in my recent book, The Destiny of Civilization.

This paper was presented on November 1, 2022. on the German e-site
https://braveneweurope.com/michael-hudson-germanys-position-in-americas-new-world-order. A video of my talk will be available on YouTube in about ten days.

1. See Guntram Wolff, “Sholz should send an explicit message on his visit to Beijing,” Financial Times, October 31, 2022. Wolff is the director and CE of the German Council on Foreign Relations. ↑

Reflections on the Coup in Ukraine – 2014-2022

October 25, 2022

Part I

Victor Yanukovich was elected President of the Ukraine in 2010 narrowly defeating Yulia Timoshenko with 49% of votes cast to Timoshenko’s 45%. The Ukrainian Presidential term of office lasts for five years. Yanukovich’s party, the Party of the Regions, together with its coalition partner, the Communist party of the Ukraine, also had a majority in the Ukrainian Parliament, with Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister. The membership of the European Union was one of the more salient issues during this time and was the trigger for subsequent upheavals.

Negotiations for Ukraine’s initial stage of eventual membership of the EU – the Association Agreement – had been dragging on since 2011, with both Yanukovich and Azarov favorably disposed, although the communist coalition partners were not.

This did not go down at all well in Moscow and Azarov tried to assuage Russian misgivings by urging Russia “to accept the reality of Ukraine signing the EU agreement”. The commitment of Yanukovich was eventually to be tested to destruction since he was being pulled in two directions: by Russia on the one hand, and the EU on the other. For their part the Russians offered the Ukraine a $15 billion loan, a discount on gas prices, and membership of the customs union of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. But the EU was having none of it: President of the Euro-pean Commission José Manuel Barroso stated that the EU will not tolerate “a veto of a third country” (Russia) in their negotiations on closer integration with Ukraine. Thus, Yanukovich was forced into a choice which would be certain to alienate and anger one of the powerful interested partners on his borders.

Negotiations dragged on into 2013. Yanukovich was invited to sign the Association Agreement, but there were a number of conditions. The most significant of these were those concerning an IMF loan. The conditions were very much in the tradition of IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes (the scourge of the developing world). This was enough to scupper the EU deal. Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov stating that ‘’the issue that blocked the signature of the EU deal were the conditions proposed by the IMF loan being negotiated at the same time as the Association Agreement, which would require large budget cuts and a 40% increase in gas bills. This, for a country already verging on bankruptcy. In store for the Ukraine was the usual neo-liberal IMF austerity package, deregulation, privatization, and liberalization. The Greek treatment. Yanukovich took the Russian offer instead.

This seemed like a normal business decision, but it was not perceived as such in the western Ukraine backed by the EU and US. The whole episode then kicked-off.

The battle in Kiev and the Interim Government

Immediately this became known as the mass protest in Kiev and the west was on the world’s TV screens, with demonstrators waving Ukrainian and EU flags (where they got all these EU flags is a mystery to this day). This seemed to be a mass popular protest and the demonstrators were to set up camps in Independence Square, but the carnival atmosphere was not to last.

Ultra-nationalist groups (inveterate fascists, in the shape of Right Sector and Svoboda and even more exotic neo-nazi grouplets) began to appear among the generally moderate majority and battles with the Berkut (riot police) began on a daily basis which the opposition forces finally won. A victory for democracy and ‘people’s power’ as stated in the Guardian editorial? Not quite. For nobody should be in any doubt about the political complexion of these ultra-nationalist groups who went on to hold six portfolios in the new government based in Kiev. Nor should anybody be in any doubt about both the overt and covert role played by both US and EU officials in the formation of the future interim ‘government’. Throughout this period the EU and high-ranking US officials were openly engaged in Ukraine’s internal affairs. The US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs – Victoria Nuland – were strolling around Independence square reassuring the protestors that America stood behind them. Also basking in the limelight were US NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Although in the case of NED it should be called a GO rather than an NGO since it was not officially funded by the US government. Also involved was Human Rights Watch (HRW); and of course, not forgetting the ineffable George Soros and the Open Society Foundation (OSF). US expenditure on this colour revolution amounted to some $5 billion. This was later made public at a talk given by Ms Nuland to the press club in Washington. These actions could never have taken place without being sanctioned at the highest level of the US government. Additionally, the EU representative – Catherine Ashton – a total nonentity and a complete airhead of the type which is the machine-produced by the British Labour party, carried out much the same function for the EU although at a more official level.

But other important things were taking shape in Ukraine itself.

The ultra-right Svoboda Party had scored six major cabinet ministries in the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk approved by the Ukrainian parliament on Thursday. Svoboda is the Neo-Nazi, ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russophobic party with its base of support in the Western Ukraine, with links to the Front Nationale in France and the BNP in the UK … The most important post was claimed by a co-founder of Svoboda, Andriy Parubiy. He was named Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee, which supervised the defense ministry and the armed forces. The Parubiy appointment to such an important post should, alone, be cause for international outrage. He led the masked Right Sector thugs who battled riot police in the Independence Maidan in Kiev.”

Dmitry Yarosh was Leader of Right Sector. The Ukraine’s own Ernst Roehm – one-time leader of German Brownshirt radicals – the (SA) Sturm Abteilung – Storm Troopers.

The Right Sector is an openly fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-Russian organization. Most of the snipers and bomb throwers in the crowds were connected with this group. Right Sector members have been participating in military training camps for the last two years or more in preparation for street activity of the kind witnessed in the Ukraine over the last events.

The Right Sector, as can be seen by the appointment of Parubiy, was now in a position to control major appointments to the provisional government and succeeded in achieving its long-term goal of legalizing discrimination against Russians. The new parliament has passed legislation that declared Russian speakers no longer have equal rights with Ukrainians.

He is also associated with Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s Fatherland Party and Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector delegation in parliament, was named Parubiy deputy. These appointments of those openly fascist groups to positions of control over the armed forces are particularly alarming given the possibility of provocations against the Russian naval base in Sevastopol.

Oleksandr Sych, a Svoboda parliamentarian from Ivano-Frankivsk best known for his attempts to ban all abortions in Ukraine, including those resulting from rape, was named deputy prime minister for economic affairs. Svoboda was also rewarded with the Education Ministry under Serhiy Kvit, as well as the Ecology Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry under Andriy Makhnyk and Ihor Shvaiko, respectively. Earlier in the week Svoboda Member of Parliament Oleh Makhnitsky was named prosecutor-general of the Ukraine.

(I hope I got those names right – FL!)

Others with ultra-right associations with the Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO) also received cabinet posts. Tatyana Chernovol was portrayed in the Western press as a crusading investigative journalist without reference to her past involvement in the anti-semitic UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-corruption committee. Dmytro Bulanov known for his alleged kidnapping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO connections, was appointed minister of youth and sports.

Yatsenyuk’s Fatherland Party, and figures close to it, obtained ten cabinet posts, including deputy prime minister for EU integration, interior, justice, energy, infrastructure, defense, culture, social issues, and a minister without portfolio. Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Independence Maidan and politically close to Yatsenyuk, was appointed chair of the Lustration Committee, which was charged with purging followers of President Yanukovich from government and public life.

In a society where oligarchs play such an important political and economic role it is unsurprising that Volodymyr Groysman, mayor of Vinnytsia and close associate of oligarch Petro Poroshenko – one time finance minister in Yanukovich’s government – was chosen as deputy prime minister for regional affairs. Groysman was also close to former President Viktor Yushchenko. The new finance minister, Oleksander Shlapak, is a representative of oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskiy, the second wealthiest man in the Ukraine.

“The remaining cabinet posts went to technocrats, a doctor who organized medical services for the Maidan protestors, and a retired police general.’’

(Global Research 02/03/2014)

The interim cabinet matches exactly the government Victoria Nuland recommended in her intercepted call with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev where she revealed the U.S. plan for a coup in Ukraine. Vitali Klitschko and his UDAR party were excluded, likely because of their close relationship with German chancellor Angela Merkel. Yatseniuk’s Fatherland Party received the majority of portfolios. And as Nuland demanded, so long as Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok did not receive a major cabinet post, Svoboda could receive several ministries.

­FALLOUT

After the assumption of power by the new regime in Kiev the former government parties, namely the Party of the Regions and the Communist Party were both banned in 10 of the western regions of the Ukraine. Additionally party offices were burned down and former members of Yanukovich’s coalition and supporters were intimidated, verbally and physically assaulted by supporters of the new regime.

Then came the bombshell, though not entirely unexpected – and now a virtual coup – to be formalized in the referendum 16th March. This regarding the Crimea’s secession from the Ukraine, an event which stoked up an international crisis with the big beasts getting involved in geopolitical positioning and a propaganda war.

One can only speculate about the consequences –national, regional, and international – of the events in Kiev and the future reaction to these events in the Eastern and southern Oblasts of the Ukraine: an arc stretching from Odessa, through Crimea, East to Mariupol, on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and east and north up to Donetsk, Lugansk and the old Ukrainian capital of Kharkov. This is about half the country where most of the industry was situated, particularly in the Don Bass area. Will they, the staunch and solid electoral base for Yanukovich, be willing to be governed by the new regime in Kiev? Or will they follow the Crimean secession?

We shall wait and we shall see. Well, we did see. What happens next one wonders!?

Reflections on the Revolution in Ukraine 2014-2022

Part II

Francis Lee reports on the Crimean Referendum, the double-standards of western government & media reactions and the challenges facing the unelected Kiev regime

The ongoing crisis in the Ukraine has reached another point of (perhaps unexpected) development. It was obvious to most impartial observers that the parliament of the Crimea had staked its position very early – namely, that they were unwilling to accept the authority of the unelected Kiev regime. The first calls for a referendum came as early as February and March 2014. This seemed to chime with what the majority of Crimea’s population, mostly ethnic Russians, also seemed to think, and so it turned out. The arrival of Russian troops would probably not have made any difference to the eventual outcome, but just to make sure Putin sent his special forces to protect his military assets in Sevastopol. Under a prior arrangement with the Ukraine Russia held a 25-year lease on the Sevastopol naval base, for which it also paid a rental of US$500 million per annum. Moreover, the conditions of Russia’s leasehold also included the right to station up to 16,000.00 naval and military personnel in the Crimea.

Having said this, the results of the referendum – which did not come as any great surprise – was rather tarnished by the obvious presence of Russian soldiers at checkpoints, Simferopol airport, railway stations and other strategic locations. This caused the spokespersons for the western alliance – EUSA for short – to go into propaganda overdrive and drive its media sycophants into a state of near apoplexy. It was argued that the referendum was illegal since it violated the constitution of the Ukraine. However, whatever the legal position in the Crimea, the upholders of the Ukrainian constitution – the Kiev regime – were undoubtedly illegal, having come to power by mob violence, so that it was scarcely in a position to declare the Crimean referendum illegal. It has also been pointed out that the referendum in Kosovo resulted in a secession from the disintegrating state of Yugoslavia, took place in the presence of a foreign occupying force, as did the referendum in the Falkland Islands.

What the whole Ukrainian imbroglio was clearly demonstrating was the barefaced hypocrisy and double standards of the western media – including the soi-disant doyen of the liberal-left, the Guardian. No lie it seems is big enough as long as it serves the noble cause of the western alliance. Whether these neo-con foreign policies and neo-liberal economic policies are ‘noble’ remains something of a moot point, however.

UKRAINIAN DOMESTIC POLITICS

What next? The problems facing the Kiev regime are considerable. Firstly, there is the ongoing embarrassment of the neo-fascist element now entrenched in the government, and it’s all too ubiquitous presence on the streets, where Svoboda and Right Sector paramilitaries swagger around in Kiev as if they own the place, and in a certain sense they do. After all they spearheaded the revolution, notwithstanding the fact that they probably only represented a minority in the general protest movement. As has already been made clear they now hold six ministerial portfolios some in extremely sensitive areas. How far does the regime control these ultra-radicals?

It was all very reminiscent of Italy earlier in the 20th century and the emergence of the fasci (Blackshirts) under the leadership of Benito Mussolini which styled themselves as the united front against Bolshevism, and a little later in Germany in 1934, where the Nazi paramilitaries, the (SA)-Brownshirts under the command of the leader and notorious homosexual Ernst Roehm, were calling for a second revolution, which is exactly what Dmitry Yarosh, leader of Right Sector was also calling for. Moreover, he called for nationalization of selected industries – classic fascist economic policy – in the Ukraine and has gone on record that he will blow up the gas pipeline (sic!) from Russia to western Europe if Russia invades the Ukraine. This coming from a minister in a ‘government’ duly recognized by the west. Recent incidents have brought to light this acute PR problem for the new order not only for the head of the Kiev regime. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and also his western backers spilt the beans when one such incident is reported as follows:

“When state-owned Ukrainian TV broadcast celebrations of Russia’s annexation of Crimea on Moscow’s Red Square, a group of nationalist politicians cried betrayal. They burst into the office of the channel’s executive, accused him of being a Russian stooge, punched him and forced him to sign a resignation letter.

The assault, which prompted condemnation in the West presents an important test for Ukraine’s new pro-western government. … For Ihor Miroshnichenko, a lawmaker with the nationalist Svoboda party, those scenes of Russian domination were all too much. Moreover, the broadcast of Russian celebrations seemed to add insult to injury.

To vent his rage, he led a group of Svoboda colleagues in storming the office of the First National channel’s chief, Oleksandr Panteleymonov, used an insulting term used to describe Russians and punched him repeatedly, while an aide recorded the scene on video.

“His position is complicated by the fact that Svoboda, a vocal force in parliament that took part in the protests that ousted the pro-Russian government, received several key posts in the Cabinet – including prosecutor general, the very figure who will be in charge of investigating the TV station attack.’’

(Maria Danilova, Associated Press Kiev)

But they were the methods by which, whether by design or default, Yatsenyuk and his regime came to power. This is the problem with revolutions, they open a Pandora’s Box of unforeseen and unwelcome outcomes. And this particular incident is just one among many.

Of course Hitler had a short method of dealing with the SA paramilitaries: their leadership was wiped out by the SS during the infamous ‘’Night of the Long Knives’’ in June 1934 and the rank and file drafted into the army. Unfortunately for Yatsenyuk he doesn’t have an SS to do the requisite dirty work, even if he wanted.

The Upcoming election in May for the Ukrainian Parliament provided another litmus test for the Kiev regime. Given the fact that there has been a de facto ban on both the Communist Party and The Party of the Regions, Yanukovich’s party, in the western Ukraine, and a process of ratification to make the ban legal which is now before the Parliament, how fair and free is this forthcoming election likely to be? It would also be a good bet that parties favouring separatism in the past – the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine, for example – or openly separatist parties, will wish to contest the election. Noises coming from Kiev would seem to suggest that this will not be allowed. Thus, the whole swathes of the Ukrainian electorate will be effectively disenfranchised.

This last point brings up yet another problem: what will happen in the Eastern Oblasts. There have al- ready been mass demonstrations in Kharkov and Donetsk for a Crimean style referendum, and this has led to a number of arrests including one Pavel Gubarov, a leading separatist from the Donetsk region and member of the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine. He is now awaiting trial in Kiev. This fissure in Ukrainian politics is not likely to go away any time soon and could lead to open conflict.

THE UKRAINIAN ECONOMY

Turning to the economics, the regime in Kiev has further deep-going problems to deal with; problems which look frankly intractable. Namely, the country is effectively bankrupt. It is now being bounced into a fast-tracked membership of the EU by a non-elected government in the belief that EU membership is, for some obscure reason, thought to be the deus ex machina. In fact, EU membership could simply exacerbate the situation as has been the case in the peripheral regions of western Europe. We need to pose the question as to why, a predominantly, poor, agricultural country, with an industrial base which is basically technologically obsolescent, and which could not compete with the industries of western Europe, wishes to join, and open its markets to the EU. This would be the right royal road to under-development, as local industries would simply disappear, or be subject to take-over by foreign multinationals. The Ukraine would join a long list of East European states which now form a low-wage, outsourcing hinterland for western multinationals.

Additionally, since Ukraine will need considerable credits and loans, it can expect a man from the IMF to come knocking on the door and insisting that the country ‘reforms’ its economic and financial structures before Ukraine gets any cash. – for ‘reforms’ read the dreaded Structural Adjustment Programme: cuts in public expenditure, devalue the currency, privatize state assets, end subsidies, deregulate, open the economy to financial flows (‘hot money’’) lower wage costs … the usual and devastating neo-liberal package which we have seen operationalized from Chile, to Thailand, to Greece.

This destabilization process of Ukraine will not be easily reversed. If only the protest movement had waited until the democratic presidential elections in 2015, much of this might have been avoided. But outside forces wished to force the issue and had no time for such fuddy-duddy notions such as democratic elections. These geopolitical issues will be dealt with in the next bulletin.

Reflections on the Revolution in Ukraine

Part III

It’s the geopolitics stupid!

At an important meeting held in Paris to discuss the future of Ukraine, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov, were unable to find sufficient common ground to come to any firm decisions regarding the future of the country. Kerry rejected the legality of the referendum in the Crimea and, for his part, Lavrov, was firm in his stance on the dubious legality of the present regime in Kiev. It was always going to be tough for the two interlocutors to come to any productive outcomes in this diplomatic context.

Additionally, Lavrov insisted upon the virtual semi- detachment of Ukraine’s eastern oblasts which did not go down at all well in Kiev. The Russian plan was to essentially impose a political solution where Ukraine’s eastern and southern provinces have greater autonomy, the right to speak the Russian language and the ability to pursue much more independent policies from the central government. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say they worry such a formula could provide the Kremlin with a virtual veto over Kiev’s political system.

The plan was briefly outlined by Lavrov as follows:

“We are certain that Ukraine needs profound constitutional reform. In all, fairness, we can’t see any other way to ensure the stable development of Ukraine but to sign a federal agreement,” Mr. Lavrov said in an interview on Saturday (29/03/14) with Russian state media. “Some may know better and are, perhaps, capable of finding some magic spell to ensure living in a unitary state with people in the West, on the one hand, and the southeast, on the other.”

All of which illustrates the position of Ukraine as being on the geo-political fault-lines between the US and its EU allies and Russia. It seems that national sovereignty is now off the agenda for both sides as they jockey for position. It would now appear that the Ukraine which was, is no more, partition and separation are beginning to look inevitable. Had the Presidential elections in Ukraine taken place as they were scheduled, and which Yanukovich would probably have lost, the story might have been very different. Unfortunately, there were outside forces who had little patience with Presidential elections and were more interested in regime change.

Which brings me to one Ms. Victoria Jane ‘f**k the EU’ Nuland (born 1961) the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State. She who along with US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt were strolling around among the crowds at the Maidan offering cookies, doughnuts, as well as encouraging and comforting words. As I said at the time, this could have only taken place with clearance from the White House.

Why do I see fit to mention her and why is she of any importance? Well for one she was engaged in determining the personnel of the interim Ukrainian administration. In a bugged telephone conversation with Pyatt, Nuland argued that boxing champion Klitschko of the Udar (Punch in English) party was not to be included in any forthcoming administration but that the Deputy (and acting) leader of the Fatherland Party, Yatsenyuk (Timoshenko’s party) should be included. Apart from this faux pas there was the admission whereby Ms. Nuland that the US has invested $5 Billion in The development of Ukrainian, ‘Democratic Institutions’.

But perhaps most importantly is the fact that Ms Nuland is the wife of one Robert Kagan. Mr Kagan is an American historian and is important in as much as he was one of the co-founders of The Project for the New American Century, (PNAC) an international relations think-tank based in Washington DC, established in 1997 together with arch US foreign policy hawks, Richard Perle and William Kristol. Their stated goal was to ‘promote American global leader- ship’. Their position that ‘American leadership was both good for America and good for the world’ and that this should be vigorously asserted as a main plank of US foreign policy. Kagan himself was to state that ‘the US is an empire and should be an empire.’ The position of these neo-conservatives, or neo-cons as they became known, was frankly comparable to jihadist ambitions to reshape the world to conform to Sharia law. The neo-cons wanted to shape the world to the American way, which is presumably good in the sight of God. If this took regime change, then so be it. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of the great crusade.

If these people had merely been some eccentric fringe group – of which there are many on the other side of the pond – it would not have much mattered. But it becomes clear that with its members in many key administrative positions in the department of State, that the PNAC has exerted influence on high level government officials in the administration of both Bush and Obama. This fact notwithstanding its organization was much reduced by 2006. The worldview had by now become embedded in American strategic thinking. The Westphalian doctrine that no state shall attack another state unless the other state directly threatened its interests, was now considered passé, and regime change, as we have seen in Iraq, Libya and possibly Syria, is now regarded as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy. As Guardian columnist George Monbiot was to write, ‘’to pretend that this battle begins and ends in Iraq requires a willful denial of the context in which it occurs. That context is a blunt attempt by a super-power to reshape the world to suit itself. (The Guardian 11 March 2003)

The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1990/91 and the touted ending of the Cold War, saw the imposition of a virtual Treaty of Versailles on Russia under the puppet dictator and buffoon, Boris Yeltsin. Russia, like Germany in 1919, was to be kept down, humiliated, and have its nose rubbed into its new status at every opportunity. Moreover, its economy was almost destroyed by the economic shock therapy imposed by the IMF/World Bank, under the tutelage of one Jeffrey Sachs. The various ex-Warsaw Pact states – Poland, Hungary, DDR, the Baltics, Czech Republic – were drawn into the EU and then NATO. NATO itself was expanded rather than wound down.

This was an interesting development since the EU’s foreign policy orientation underwent a profound change (its economic policies had already changed – for the worse). Initially the EU was supposed to be a third force standing between American capitalism, and Soviet communism. This at least is how De Gaulle saw it: non-aligned with an independent foreign policy akin perhaps to Yugoslavia under Tito. Additionally, the policy outlined by Jacques Delors was one of managed capitalism of the Germany sozialemark- twirtschaft variety and French etatisme seemed more attractive than the deregulated, financialized systems of the US and UK.

As things unfolded, however, the Delors’ model was discarded, and a neo-liberal regime foisted upon European regardless. The drive to the east meant that EU widening prevented the type of EU deepening that De Gaulle and Delors had had in mind. But now foreign policy was also to become Americanized. The UK, of course had always been incorrigibly Atlanticist, but it would have been safe to assume that continental powers – particularly France – would be less so. After denouncing the Iraq War – along with Russia and Germany – France now (under a socialist government!) was actually front-running US imperialism (let’s call it what it is) and taking the initiative in regime change operations in Libya, Mali and almost Syria.

Thus, we now have a situation whereby the EU has effectively become the spearhead of US operations of subversion and regime change (in the name of enlargement) in driving east into Europe right up to the Russian frontier. In the case of Romania US missiles have already been installed, and the plan is for a broader deployment throughout Europe. Europe apparently has a neo-con foreign policy to complement its neo-liberal economic policy.

“… it is not only Great Britain that is Atlanticist. The continental European states are no less so, despite their seeming intention to construct a political Europe. Proof of this is given by the central position of NATO in this political construction. For some European countries (the ex-COMECON states) NATO’s protection, that is that of the US, against their ‘’Russian enemy’’ is more important than their adhesion to the European Union.’’

(The Implosion of Capitalism – Samir Amin – p.203)

And so, the great game continues. One of the principal things to emerge from this has been the absolute spinelessness of European leaders and their willingness to do the US’s dirty work. One wonders whether this EU is any longer worth belonging to – the Ukrainian imbroglio has been a great game-changer in this respect.

Nord Stream, currencies & credibility go bust for EU liberalism

October 20, 2022

by Ramin Mazaheri

There’s no more obvious failure of Europe’s politicians to protect their own citizens than the drop in the euro and the pound to below parity and near-parity, respectively, with the United States dollar.

However, this article was planned before the brazen sabotage of the Russian-German Nord Stream gas pipelines which – almost impossibly – outranks the currencies’ collapse!

The two seismic events actually dovetail perfectly: both illustrate the absolute failure of Western Liberal Democracy for everyone but the Western 1%.

Why would anyone interested in the theory of governance treat the above as hot news? Western leadership may have infinite personal faults and a bottomless appetite for blood and treasure, but their instability is so endemic so as to be clearly structural.

If we accept the Hobbesian insistence that government is here to prevent disorder, then what can we say about the record of the pan-European project, which we can define as the combined efforts of the European Union, the euro and the Eurogroup, the hidden but legal and accountable banker cabal which rules the euro and thus a score of European nations? Their record is one of shameless pride in unabashed failure for Europe’s working-poor class, which used to be called the “middle class”.

On January 1, 2008,1 euro was worth $1.47 and 1 pound was worth $1.98. How very far the strength of the pan-European project has fallen!

Allowing the drop to parity with the dollar must be combined with the reminder that Europe’s leaders were the only major macroeconomic area which refused to implement a recovery plan after the Great Financial Crisis. They chose, over the will of voters, the Age of Austerity, which can be described as the Americanization of the European social safety net; or the end of the era of European Social Democracy, for which so many millions died on their battlefields of World War I and II; or the creation of the current, incredibly unequal Western Gilded Age II.

There is still no recognition of failure by Europe’s leadership: the UK actually tried to re-embark on economic Thatcherism, while France is about to pass its annual budget via the incredibly anti-democratic 49-3 executive decree. Just as I predicted: Macron’s legislative victory was just enough that he will never lose a no-confidence vote over any issue of right-wing economic importance.

The currency collapses, which are like huge pay cuts for the average European, were enough to make this point: the pan-European project continues to only fail to bring about the promised prosperity and stability. The cause of Europe’s economic collapse isn’t bad luck, or due to foreign aggression or sanctions, or the result of neoliberal “reforms” just not getting enough time to play out – it’s due to the failure of the ideology of Western Liberal Democracy itself.

Nord Stream: Germans can no longer have any illusions

It was hard to imagine a more naked escalation of the 8-year Ukraine conflict than the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.

It’s long been said that the only actual winner from the conflict has been the United States. Because the arrival of peace would be a change to the current status quo the US has the most to lose from a victory of diplomacy. The destruction of Nord Stream virtually ended chances of a diplomatic solution to the conflict during the expected lull in fighting over the next 3 or 4 months, and maybe beyond.

There was no Western outrage over Nord Stream, which may be the biggest proof that they were behind the sabotage. The lack of outrage of The New York Times speaks volumes, as does its repeated terming of explosions as mere “breaks” or “leaks”. Bloomberg labeled the sabotage merely “Putin’s Pettiness”, although for Europeans the price of energy is hardly a petty concern.

What happened to Nord Stream seems clear, and that’s going beyond the now-viral clips from this year of both Joe Biden and Victoria “F*** the EU” Nuland promising the end of the Nord Stream project by any means necessary, which are the definitions of rhetorical smoking guns. We can fairly assume that for many years the United States has been colluding with Poland to destroy the Nord Stream project, and they finally succeeded.

Poland’s ex-Foreign Minister from 2007 to 2014 – no short tenure – couldn’t restrain his joy at the culmination of plotting he was probably present at from the very beginning (Nord Stream first broke ground in 2011), tweeting a picture of the gas leak and the words “Thank you USA”.

The problem, at least for those in Europe who believe that Washington is a true ally, is that Poland and the US have likely colluded to hurt Poland’s ostensible partner, Germany, as well as the largest economic force in the pan-European project. Thus, the US is manipulating individual states within the pan-European project to ensure that the pan-European project itself cannot rise above it’s ordered station, which is: policy subservience to Washington’s needs. The US is using the classic imperialist strategy of dividing and conquering peoples and tribes, this time within the EU.

Is Berlin merely a vassal to Washington?

However emotionally satisfying as the nationalist component is for some people, it is not logically satisfying – only the class angle explains it: Liberal Democracies are the product of international collusion among the 1% class, which is a class that puts maintaining their elite status far above concepts of patriotism. Western Liberal Democracy – as Marx proved way back in 1848 (and he was merely reporting what the recently-freed European serfs were all saying) – is the collusion of the 1% against the rest of the country/continent/world/galaxy. Monarchy and aristocrats are not actually dead!

The complete transcription of Nuland’s comments make this clear. She said, “We continue to have very clear and strong conversations with our German allies, and I want to be clear with you today. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2, will not move forward.”

The key phrase is not the threat but “clear and strong conversation with our German allies”: the US elite is colluding with the German elite, and the non-elite Germans can only go triple up on sweaters, ration their meat and hope they don’t join the jobless.

What on earth can the Germans be feeling about their own leaders?

It must be total contempt, no? Berlin either helped destroy, or allowed the destruction of, their sovereign energy program, and amid the most economic uncertainty in almost 15 years.

The Western “Great Game” moves to the West itself

The currency collapses are bad, but Nord Stream explodes the Western corona slogan of, “We are all in this together”. Europe’s elites are not in it together with their own voters, and France’s Yellow Vests knew this in 2019. They knew that they were being permanently declassed into the hopeless working-poor, and so they resisted so bravely and intelligently.

Will Germans soon realise that they are on the same road? Will they have the courage to give voice to their contempt for their own government, as the French did? If so, how far the smug, Greece-shaming, falsely-pious Germans have to fall, indeed!

It can now be said that the successful resistance of places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – as well as Iran and Hezbollah – have so bankrupted Western imperialists that America’s detonation of Germany’s prime energy source proves that the 19th century Western and Russian “Great Game” has moved from Persia, Central Asia and India to inside the West in the 21st century.

This is another proof that the pan-European project is “neo-imperialist” – they are colluding in the colonisation of their own people: imperialism is not only for non-Whites anymore.

If the German people rise up as the French did recently then we will likely see a total Balkanisation of the perpetually-failing pan-European project. This is why the Nord Stream sabotage was so shocking – what a risk the West has taken! They are apparently relying on Germans to maintain their smug, complacent illusion of self-supremacy even despite the obvious fact that the pan-European project is against them as much as it is against Greece.

What on earth are Europe’s leaders doing to themselves, or rather, to their own citizens?!

This is the question Iran has been asking for years, with Europe’s failure to implement the JCPOA agreement on Iran’s nuclear energy program. Russia has recently joined this chorus.

The pan-European project wasn’t designed merely to ensure American hegemony over Europe, but to ensure that the international, liberalist 1% has hegemony over the world. My new book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values, gives a daily, hard-news summation of the failure of the pan-European project since 2009. It also shows that the autocratic legacy of monarchism/elitism lives on via the anti-democratic ideology known as Western Liberal Democracy – all of Europe’s noblest values since 1789 continue to be subverted by the Western 1%.

If you can, get paid in dollars.

But perhaps Germans, and other Europhiles, truly are willing to go cold, hungry and jobless – not for Ukraine, but to ensure the wealth of Western elites?

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His latest book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’.

Cui bono? The Big Picture

October 18, 2022

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

(note: the author is not Russian, knows no Russians and has never been to Russia)

Further to my last “Motive, Means and Opportunity” summary regarding who blew up the Nordstream pipelines (the USA), let us stand back and look at the bigger global picture today. Let us ask “Cui bono?” with regard to the entire Ukrainian debacle.

First of all, we need to be absolutely clear that this insane FUBAR Ukraine situation was 100% concocted, fabricated and engineered by the USA, certainly since the droolin’ Nuland / lamebrained McCain / CIA Maidan coup of 2014, but even dating back before that. There are few situations in life where one party can be found to be 100% guilty and evil and morally bankrupt, and where the other party is 100% acting in self defence and self preservation. However history will show that with respect to this Ukraine situation, the USA was 100% the evil aggressor and Russia was 100% acting in self preservation and in defense of civilian Russian speakers in Ukraine. This is truly a war of good against evil and in case you still haven’t got the message yet, let me repeat: the USA Deep State is EVIL. This reality is indisputably obvious to any semi-comatose person remotely interested in historical, documented FACTS. For those with any remaining doubts, they need to listen to this comprehensively researched three part podcast summary by a journalist and a military historian (both Anglophones). They actually obtained their information from Western mainstream media sources before those reports and articles mysteriously vanished from the Google search algorithms (or were relegated to 500^th priority on the search list) after 24 Feb 2022:

It is unfortunate that the stupid sheeple of the West, probably 99% of the “golden billion”, believe the exact opposite of the Truth, which is testimony to the incredible effectiveness of the relentless lying propaganda pooped out from the AngloEuroZionist mainstream media sewer outlets ever since 24 Feb 2022.

Until the two recent terrorist bombings (Nordstream pipelines and Kerch bridge), Russia had been reacting in a highly restrained manner to the US and US proxy aggravations. The US started provocations many years ago and contemptuously rebuffed multiple opportunities for peaceful settlements. Russia will soon end it. How? With the humiliating defeat of Ukraine for sure, but more widely we will see the economic devastation of Europe (apart from those who buy energy in Rubles – eg Hungary and Turkey) and eventually the destabilization of the USA: perhaps with civil war and revolution in the USA, resulting from its own inevitable economic collapse. The latter two eventualities were never Russia’s intended goal, but will be unintended consequences of the malicious actions of the US and EU themselves, blowback or karma if you like.

So what motivated the USA to provoke Russia to invade Ukraine? What parties hoped to benefit from it (hint: definitely not the US public) and what were the short, medium and long term goals of the US Deep State? Context is everything and we need to view the big picture, which can be found in Andrei Martyanov’s excellent book which was nicely summarized in this review:

How Russia Views America

In short: US industrial, economic and social decay, all entirely self inflicted over the past several decades, have led to the decline of the USA as a functional society and hence to the impending loss of its unipolar global hegemony. This is a situation that the megalomaniacal “indispensable nation, shining beacon on a hill” ideologues simply cannot accept.

It is vital to understand exactly how this hollowed out mockery of a former empire continues to limp along in a moribund fashion right now, just prior to its complete self-inflicted collapse:

• Most important is to understand how the US fraudulent “economy” works. The best commentator regarding this is the brilliant Real World Economist* Professor Michael Hudson whose works are too numerous for me to mention https://michael-hudson.com/ In brief, the US economy largely operates as a global blood sucking parasite, by extracting wealth from the rest of the world and by keeping weaker countries under the its jackboot (AKA economic Neocolonialism). The major mechanism for this is the exuberant privilege of the US dollar as the International Reserve Currency, a privilege no other country has.
• This scam operates in tandem with other mechanisms that were contrived and designed and tweaked and refined to suit the US “rules based order” ever since Bretton-Woods in 1944 (which established the precursors to the World Bank, WTO and IMF, with the simultaneous designation of the USD as IRC), the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 by Nixon and especially the US creation of the Petrodollar. This was a Godfather type “offer you can’t refuse” that the USA presented to the Middle Eastern Oil producers. It was a protection racket that the Gulf States sequentially signed up to and was completed by 1974. Oil, an essential commodity, could only be bought from the Gulf States in USD, all other currencies were refused. Where could a country get USD from? Why from the USA of course, in exchange for real world products. The Petrodollar enabled the USA to obtain limitless high quality imported products for free by simply electronically “printing” US dollars, quite apart from getting free oil. It was the first class ticket on a gravy train of unimaginable wealth far exceeding the wildest fantasies of the most avaricious, rapacious, greedy robber barons. If the US could get imported goods for free, why bother to fund US domestic industries? Why not offshore their industrial production? So that is exactly what the US did.
• Petrodollar recycling involved the investment of excess oil profits from the Middle Eastern States in US debt securities / treasury bonds, which further propped up the fiat US dollar, even though the USD had no intrinsic value in itself. The value of the dollar was based entirely on the confidence of those who invested in those US “assets”. It was a confidence trick based on a protection racket. This is what enabled the US to rack up trillions of dollars in debt, backed up by the savings from foreign countries, to fund 800+ US military bases around the world. This is a debt that will never be repaid when this whole Ponzi scheme collapses.
• All this is coming to an end. The Neocons believe that the only way such US global parasitism can continue to operate is to subjugate the “World Island” ie. Eurasia. To “regime change” Putin and Xi and to ultimately Balkanise the whole of Eurasia, each banana republic to be “led” by a US puppet dictator. This wet dream “strategy” is derived entirely from the well worn CIA playbook. Such actions had been repeatedly inflicted by the US on practically every state of Latin America (the “Monroe doctrine”) and on Global South countries over many decades. The US Neocons believe that the subjugation of Eurasia is the only way to resurrect the dead corpse of Bretton-Woods and the Petrodollar and to force the rest of the world to continue funneling their Real World valuable commodities and products to the USA for free.

Much has been written about the Mackinder declaration that “who controls the World Island controls the world“, a sentiment echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’ and certainly adhered to by the US Neocons who run the Deep State. This is why the sock puppet Biden, or more specifically his handlers, have been provoking dangerous confrontations in Ukraine and in the East China Sea ever since Biden’s “election”. The US has gone back to its “gunboat diplomacy” historical roots, thuggish bastardry which worked in the past to bully other countries into compliance, but which cannot work today against nations that now possess hypersonic missiles. Such US behavior is a “hail Mary” pass, the last desperate act of a failing unipolar hegemon.

The above account describes the USA’s long term Grand View, better termed a Grand Delusion. Given the advanced state of decay of the US and the unstoppable rise of China and Russia militarily, industrially, economically and socially, there is zero prospect of the USA prevailing. There are only two possible outcomes: either the USA backs down or there will be global nuclear Armageddon. There is nothing in between.

Morally and ethically speaking alone, the only correct and proper and decent action is for “Exceptionalistan” to back down. They should count themselves lucky that the rest of the world has no appetite for revenge against the US after centuries of it perpetrating genocide, slavery, racism, foreign skulduggery and exploitation of the rest of the world. However the Global South is more preoccupied with their own well being, they will simply ignore the putrefying carcass of the USA, they are only interested in “win-win” interactions with partners who actually play fair, who abide by actual UN International Law and not by the US rigged “rules based order”.

What about short and medium term more limited perspectives? What specific parties hoped to gain from a war in Ukraine? The usual suspects: the Military-Industrial-Complex, the US fossil fuel industry and possibly the US banking/financial sector.

The MIC: How does the US MIC profit from perpetual war? By all rational accounts the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was a miserable failure. However the US persisted at it for 20 years, the longest war in US history. Why? Because was a massive financial windfall for the MIC, it was the gift that kept on giving. It funded numerous McMansions and luxury yachts for the MIC executives and MIC Washington lobbyists. Please refer to appendix two at the end of this document for the explanation of exactly how the Afghan debacle, and indeed all of the USA’s endless invasions and interventions, worked in financial favor of the MIC:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nio185d72vkqkpc/ChannellingTrout_full_compressed.pdf?dl=0

Today, sending “billions of dollars” worth of US ordnance to Ukraine (much of it outdated and obsolete) represents a massive financial windfall for the US MIC. It is the only way they could profitably dispose of stuff they could never legally sell. It does not matter if 30% of it goes missing (eg Javelin missiles to be sold by terrorists from car boots) nor if the rest gets blown up by the Russians. Of course, such obsolete ordnance will need to replaced with overpriced new versions to replenish the US inventory, which will be funded by ever larger sums of taxpayers’ money, to the detriment of US publicly funded roads, rail, schools, healthcare, libraries, etc, etc.

The US fossil fuel industry: In my previous “Whodunnit” article I mentioned that blowing up the Nordstream pipelines was the only way that super expensive US LNG could ever be exported to Europe. US fracked LNG is far more expensive** than piped Russian conventional gas and far more environmentally destructive, with far higher carbon emissions. In order to understand why different energy sources incur vastly different expenses in their production and distribution, it is essential to understand the concept of EROI (energy returned over invested) as well as the full life cycles of the different energy sources: from extraction to processing to transportation to end user. Such explanation is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say that high EROI energy sources are cheap to harvest and deliver, however low EROI energy sources are expensive to harvest and deliver and indeed may represent a financial net loss. Such has been true for fracked US shale oil, another Ponzi scam which was never profitable at ANY oil price (even >$100 per barrel). It was a misbegotten project that was bulldozed through using market hubris, blatant fraud, low interest bank loans and inappropriate government subsidies. Such economic stupidity and fraud is also true for the overseas export of fracked US shale gas, even before considering the expensive energy requirements to liquefy it (cooling down to around minus 163 deg C), with continued energy needed to refrigerate it during transportation in specialist highly insulated tankers (now in short supply around the world) and the multi billion dollar investments required for specialist handling at purpose designed export and import terminals (not yet built).

The USA has depleted all its economically viable sources of oil and gas, all its remaining sources have woefully low EROI and hence are super costly (energy wise and hence price wise) to extract, process and transport. Fracked shale oil is nothing like crude oil, it has the API index and volatility of paint thinner, which is why the trains used to transport it are called “bomb” trains. You cannot make diesel, the indispensable workhorse fuel, from fracked shale oil.

Russia, along with the Caspian area, has in aggregate gone past the peak of oil production, with declining EROI (with only a few fields pre-Peak eg Kashagan). However compared with the USA, the Eurasian oil and gas sources have a far higher EROI, which is IMPOSSIBLE for the US to economically compete with. The fact the the USA is now depleted of easy, cheap oil is the reason they are now stealing oil from Syria and also why they hijacked several Iranian oil tankers. Pipeline terrorism was the only way the US could sell uneconomic LNG to Europe, just as provoking a war was the only way the US could “sell” their obsolete old ordnance to Europe. Dirty tricks and devious skulduggery is how the US “free market” and “rule based order” operates, indeed how it has always operated.

The US financial sector: It was the drug crazed dream of the USA that sanctioning Russia would cause Russia to economically collapse which would then spur a coup d’etat against Putin. This goal backfired spectacularly after Russia demanded energy payments in Rubles, which caused the Ruble to appreciate beyond all expectations. Sanctioning Russia’s fossil fuel exports only caused the European and global price of oil and especially natural gas to skyrocket, leading to a huge financial windfall for Russia, which by now has largely compensated for the US theft of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves. In times of global uncertainty, many nations move their financial assets into US treasury bonds / securities as a default “safe haven” which has kept the US dollar value afloat so far. However those nations now also realize that their savings could be arbitrarily stolen at any time by the US “rules based order”, hence they are figuring out ways to shift their reserves. At present the European currencies have fallen against the USD, primarily as a result of their own energy sanctions against Russia which has caused the recession of their own economies. The European industrial sectors are poised to collapse from energy starvation. Once the BRICS+ currency arrangements and financial systems, which bypass the USD, get up and running, there will be massive flight of away from US bonds and securities and the massive international repatriation of US dollars back to the US, which will result in hyperinflation and devaluation of the US dollar, resulting in their inability to afford any imports. Along with the deindustrialised condition of the USA, resulting in no significant domestic manufacturing, that all spells extreme poverty for “Exceptionalistan”.

In summary: any initial hopes by the US banking/financial sector that they might benefit from the Ukrainian war have at best resulted in the USD remaining neutral so far, but will inevitably lead to the accelerated collapse of the USD.

CONCLUSION: The USA is screwed. Get over it.

Footnotes:

*as opposed to fraudulent economic neoliberal, neoclassical “trickle down” FIRE sector ideologues, those of the Leo Strauss, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek ilk.

**original contracted price for Russian piped gas to Germany was $280 per 1000 cubic meters vs current market price of around $2000 (and the EU is now expected to buy US LNG at “only” 6 to 7 times the cost of domestic natural gas in the US)

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/a-war-russia-set-to-win-441926

EAB

Fake Reporting on the Blown-up Pipelines and Russia’s “Annexation

Open Letter to the New York Times

September 30, 2022

Global Research,

By Peter Koenig

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate This Article button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Dear Editor of the once-upon-a-time Famous-for-truth New York Times,

With headlines like this, Sabotaged Pipelines and a Mystery: Who Did It? (Was It Russia?), even suggesting that Russia may have blown up their own pipeline, the NYT is killing its last vestige of credibility.

You know exactly this is a lie.

The only force that has a vital interest in doing so is the US / NATO conglomerate – to make sure, there is no way Germany could change their mind and go back on their decision to let their people freeze to death this winter, and to economically destroy Germany, THE economic force and leader of Europe.

You, and your analysts know that.

Unfortunately, there is no common people’s influence on our reporting. There are stronger forces that have bought into your mind-bending journalism.

Still, once a supporter of the NYT, I feel I want to tell you.

The Same with this reporting

Enormous U.S. Military Spending, EU Dragged into Abyss of War against Russia. Italy Out of the War!

Russian Proxies in Ukraine Push Moscow to Annex Occupied Regions

and

Vladimir Putin will sign agreements on Friday to take over four Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin said, after votes widely denounced as a sham

Here too, these are not “proxy” Russians who signed a sham petition to be annexed to Russia. You know it very well.

These are real Russians, living in the far Eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbas area mostly, who have been discriminated ever since the US instigated the Maidan coup on 22 February 2014 – when a neo-Nazi government was installed that let the Nazi Asov Battalions literally slaughter Ukraine’s own people in Donbas — at least 14,000 were reported killed – about half of them children – in the eight years since the “Victoria Nuland” (“Fuck Europe”) coup. See this.

We are talking about the same Asov Battalions, that helped Hitler during WWII fight against Russia.

Already in 2014 / 2015 the Donbas districts wanted to join Russia. President Putin did not allow it, because at that time he still believed in the “Minsk” Agreements, sponsored by France and Germany.

These agreements were principally meant to protect the Donbas people, as well as to demilitarize – de-Nazify – Ukraine, and to keep NATO out of Ukraine. None of the conditions of the Minsk Agreements (September 2014 and April 2015) were ever adhered to.

If truth-seeking geopolitical analysts around the globe know the real background, you, Editor-in-chief of the NYT, and your journalists, know the real story too. Still, you report lies and half-truths to further influence and promote people’s opinion against Russia.

The New York Times has become weaponized against Russia and China, by your mere reporting.

Don’t you think that this will eventually backfire?

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is from FAIR

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2022

---

A guide to the AngloEuroZionist Establishment Lexicon

September 17, 2022

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

Neoliberal economics:

Establishment version: modern free market freedom, practised by freedom loving people, to freely create freedomaceous wealth everywhere! Woohoo!

Real World Translation: rigged system to funnel wealth from the poor to the rich by imposition of slave wages and debt servitude = economic enslavement of the 99%

Disinformation:

Establishment version: anything contrary to the “truthiness” narrative espoused by Western Mainstream Media Patriots. Is Israel an apartheid state? That’s disinformation!

Real World Translation: anything which portrays the AngoEuroZionist Empire in a bad light and their enemies du jour (Russia, China, Iran etc) in a neutral or favourable light. Absolutely nothing to do with truth or facts.

National Endowment for Democracy:

Establishment version: benevolent fund by the USA to promote rule by, for and of the ordinary people in foreign countries. Yay!

Real World Translation: CIA cutout to finance astroturf campaigns to destabilise foreign governments that do not bend to the US will, in order to install US puppet regimes that will funnel wealth to the USA.

US invasion of Iraq in 2003:

Establishment version: act of “liberation” to save the world from Saddam’s WMDs and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

Real World Translation: WMD story was a fucking LIE, invasion was done to preserve the US petrodollar and control Iraqi oil assets and give massive contracts to US corporations. Killed more than a million Iraqis by 2010, so I guess you could say those Iraqis were “liberated” (from life).

Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Establishment version: unprovoked aggression by Russian dictator Vlad-the-Impaler Putin on 24 Feb 2022 because he is just plain crazy (also a vampire). So naturally the West needed to ban Russian cats and Tchaikovsky in response.

Real World Translation: belated response by Russian Duma (democratic parliament) to relentless aggression by the US/NATO since 2014 – including the murder of 14,000 civilians in Donbass, ie Russia was forced to intervene to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from genocide by the US proxies. Also more than 30 bio-pathogen labs funded by the USA (by Victoria Nuland’s own admission) were discovered in Ukraine, so there WERE WMDs in-the-making in Ukraine.

International “Rules based order”:

Establishment version: even the USA cannot properly define WTF this crapulent term means.

Real World Translation: USA makes up their one-sided rules (to always benefit itself) and orders everybody else about, otherwise foreigners face sanctions or coups or assassination of their leaders or invasion. Nothing to do with United Nations International Law.

Far too many Newspeak and Doublethink terms to itemise here!!

Commenters can think of many more!!

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

• Speaking Truth is an act of Treason in an Empire of Lies.
• Putin called the USA an Empire of Lies.
• Who is the most prominent Truth speaker in the Empire?
• Julian Assange – who is now being suitably punished for such Treason.

EAB.

US defends Biolabs in Ukraine

13 Sep 2022 22:09 

Source: Agencies

By Al Mayadeen English 

The United States admits once again to “biological research” in Ukraine, but still claims that there were no biological weapons in development there.

State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks during a news conference at the State Department in Washington, DC

The United States defended on Tuesday once again its biosecurity cooperation with Ukraine, claiming that their activities were in support of the Biological Weapons Convention.

According to US State Department spokesperson Ned Price, technical experts from the United States worked with Ukrainian delegations and “unambiguously” explained their cooperation.

Allegedly, the cooperative effort was conducted as part of the broader US Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and also included US assistance to Ukraine related to public health facilities, biosafety, biosecurity, and disease surveillance.

Russia sent in late July a formal request for a consultation meeting of the party states to the Biological Weapons Convention after it provided the states with documents proving how the US was funding a network of biological laboratories in Ukraine.

Price went on to dismiss Russia’s assertions about Washington developing biological weapons in Ukraine, claiming that Russia’s accusations were part of Moscow’s “ongoing disinformation campaign” and an attempt to “malign peaceful US cooperation with Ukraine.” 

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said during a UN Security Council meeting that Moscow would activate Articles 5 and 6 of the Biological Weapons Convention BWC to investigate the Biolabs in Ukraine.

Article 5 of the BWC stipulates that “The states, parties to this Convention, undertake to consult one another and to co-operate in solving any problems which may arise in relation to the objective of, or in the application of the provisions of, the Convention. Consultation and co-operation pursuant to this Article may also be undertaken through appropriate international procedures within the framework of the United Nations and in accordance with its Charter.”    

Article 6 states that “any state party to this Convention, which finds that any other state party is acting in breach of obligations deriving from the provisions of the Convention, may lodge a complaint with the Security Council of the United Nations. Such a complaint should include all possible evidence confirming its validity, as well as a request for its consideration by the Security Council.”

The head of the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing said there are more than 300 US-funded civilian and military biological laboratories in the world, hinting that they are particularly concentrated in Ukraine.

The funders, according to documents provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense, are Hunter Biden and his investment fund, Rosemont Seneca, and George Soros and his notorious Open Society Foundation. 

The chief of the Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces Igor Kirillov said recently that the United States was planning on transferring its programs of biological research from Ukraine to post-Soviet republics, as well as Eastern European and Baltic states.

The US had been denying the existence of the biolabs for months before confirming Russia’s accusations, with Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland saying Washington had what she referred to as “biological research facilities” in Ukraine.

Nuland refused to cooperate with the Russian parliamentary commission on the operations of US biological laboratories in Ukraine, Deputy Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev said late last month.

Data on biological laboratories found in Ukraine does not help the case of the US against claims regarding its compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had said.

Moscow also exhibited documents confirming the organization of military-biological work by the Pentagon represented by the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction Department.

• Ned Price
• biolabs

Related Stories

• Nuland refused to cooperate with Russia envoy on US biolabs in Ukraine
• China demands full information about US biolabs in Ukraine
• US funded 46 biolabs in Ukraine: Pentagon

Two Lives: Victoria and Victorine

August 20, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Victoria

Victoria Jane Nuland was born in 1961 to Sherwin Nudelman, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, and a British-born mother, Rhona Goulston. Already in his teens Nudelman had changed his name to Nuland in order to carve out a career. With the British-named Victoria, an Anglo-Zionist was clearly in the making.

Indeed, she duly studied at an elite private boarding school in Connecticut, whose alumni include many US politicians. Then she went to Brown University, where she studied Russian literature, political science and history. She married Robert Kagan, the future leading Jewish neocon.

Her worldview relects exactly the folly of the US since 1990 under the influence of the neo-imperialist neocons and Blairite-Clintonian ‘liberal interventionists’. This has resulted in mass poverty in the USA, as well as 9/11, and millions of deaths in wars and tensions outside the US with the Islamic world, Iran, Russia, China and anyone else that resists US imperialism.

From 2003 to 2005, during the US rape of defenceless Iraq and the theft of its oil and gas, Mrs Kagan was a foreign policy advisor to the notorious Cheney. She must have many deaths on her conscience from that particular mess. The Iraq catastrophe led to terrorism and counterterrorism and disastrous new wars in Libya and Syria. Meanwhile, her husband was demanding an ever more warlike foreign policy against the background of US fears of the coming multipolar world, a world which it would no longer be able to dominate.

So Mrs Kagan, who yearned for permanent NATO expansion and the encirclement of Russia, was deeply involved in the US ‘regime-change’, that is, the plot to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically-elected government by violence in 2014. This led to America’s responsibility for the ensuing civil war that had killed at least 14,000 people, women and children among them, even before 24 February 2022 and had left Ukraine the poorest country in Europe.

Her $5 billion coup in 2014 in the wretched Ukraine, a strategic candidate for NATO on Russia’s border, was implemented through Oleh Tyahnybok’s neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and the new Right Sector militia. We do not forget that it was Tyanhnybok who had delivered a speech praising Ukrainians for fighting Jews and ‘other scum’ during World War II. In February 2014 their protests in Kyiv’s Maidan Square turned into running battles led by neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing forces that the US had financed and orchestrated. A mob led by the Right Sector militia marched on Parliament and the President and others fled for their lives.

Facing the possible loss of its naval base in Sevastopol in the Crimea, Russia accepted the overwhelming result (a 97% majority) of an internationally-observed referendum in which Crimea voted to leave the Ukraine and rejoin Russia, of which it had been a part from 1783 to 1954. The Russian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, part of Russia until the terrorist Communists had given them away to the Ukraine in 1922, similarly declared independence from Neo-Nazi Kiev. This starting a bloody war between US-backed separatists in Kiev and the local Eastern Ukrainian people.

Mrs Kagan wants an ever-more dangerous War with Russia and China to justify her militarist foreign policy and Pentagon budgets. She relies on her mythical version of Russian aggression and US ‘democratic’ intentions. She claims that Russia’s military budget, one-tenth of that of the US, is proof of ‘Russian confrontation and militarisation’. She wants ‘permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border’ and sees Russia’s desire to defend itself after so many successive (and failed) Western invasions as an obstacle to NATO’s expansionism. In short, the deluded Mrs Kagan has with others unleashed intractable violence, chaos and the risk of nuclear war. How does she sleep at night?

Victorine

The other day I went over from Paris and put flowers on a grave in a small, unheard-of town in Brittany, in the hills near Loudeac. It was the first days of autumn, the trees had begun turning colour and there was a slight chill in the early morning and evening air – in northern France the weather always changes after 15 August.

Tante (Aunt) Victorine had been born in the straw on the dirt floor of a cowshed in a hamlet of six houses, which still bore the name of its Breton founder, Brehan, 1300 years later. Literally. The tiny one-floor home-built house had a dining room/kitchen/bedroom on one side and the cow lived on the other side and was sent out to the field during the day. It had changed but little in 1981 when I first met her. Living in Upper (Eastern) Brittany, she spoke not Breton, but ‘Gallo’, the local dialect of French. Or, as the locals will tell you, French is the local (Parisian) dialect of Gallo.

Victorine had been born on 22 November 1918 and inevitably, after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, she had been named Victorine. So many sturdy Breton peasants had gone out to fight the dirty ‘Boches’ and not come back. The Boches were the German enemy of the Paris elite, the elite who had so depised Bretons as ‘yokels’ (‘ploucs’) in peacetime and had banned their language. The victory, after which Victorine had been named, was not that of France, it was the victory of peace for the peasants who had lost many of their best sons fighting against so many of the best sons of Bavarian and Saxon peasants in the futile quagmires and the deadly trenches of World War I.

That was why, like so many women of her generation, Victorine did not marry: there was no-one to marry. Indeed, in 1941 her sister had had a child by a reluctant German soldier who had been forced to join the German Army and had then been sent to patrol the wilds of Brittany. It was the great taboo of the village, but we will leave the condemnation to the sour-faced village pharisees. The illegitimate child, Jean-Pierre, her great-nephew, was my friend.

Victorine did not go to church very often. She did not much like that hard, stony building where hard, stony faces condemned human-beings for loving life. She preferred the hills and streams, woods and fields of God’s Cathedral, where she passed her life, growing vegetables on her patch in the spring, picking fruit in the little orchard in summer and autumn, for eating, cooking, bottling and jam, chopping logs for winter heating, looking after her cow for milk and the best salted butter you have ever tasted, and the pig at the bottom of the garden, that would be slaughtered by the village-slaughterer, Michel, every December and sold for pork at the village butcher’s.

So Victorine eked out a living. She would have liked to have had a man and children, but it was not to be. She passed away peacefully, a smile on her face, as she went to meet her Maker in November 1989, aged just 71. It had been a hard life, spent in her little house and on its piece of land, whitening her soul, like some early Christian hermit. She had made the best of a life that, on the surface at least, had already in 1914 been wrecked before she had even been born by the war-loving elites of Berlin and Vienna and Paris and London. But if I had to choose between the life of the similarly-named Victoria and Victorine, I would prefer ten thousand times over to have the life and clear conscience of Tante Victorine. God bless her.

20 August 2022

Europe’s Third Attempt at Suicide and Generation Z+

June 27, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

‘The next war in Europe will be between Russia and Fascism, except that Fascism will be called Democracy.’

Fidel Castro, c. 1992

Introduction

Europe is a serial suicide. The first attempt began in Sarajevo in 1914 and finished in Versailles in 1919. The second began a generation later in Warsaw in 1939 and ended in Berlin in 1945. Having very nearly succeeded at the second attempt (it missed atomic bombs by mere months), Europe sobered up and slowed down, waiting till the centenary of 1914 before it tried for the third time. This attempt began in Kiev, again in Eastern Europe, in 2014 and is continuing in the Special Military Operation (SMO). At every attempt Europe has lost. The first time it lost three empires (the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian and the German), the second time two Empires, the fatally weakened British and French, so ensuring the supremacy of the American Empire in Europe, as in the rest of the world.

What will Europe lose this time? It will lose the only Empire remaining – the EU. When? Only some time after the conclusion of the SMO. Now, it would be foolish to predict with exactitude when that, which is the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide, will be. It could all be over in early July. Alternatively it could drag on for years. However, both those outcomes are extreme possibilities and there are other possibilities inbetween. Nevertheless, some tendencies are clear. It is only the extent and speed at which they will progress that is uncertain. In any case, whatever happens in the Ukraine, Europe will be reformatted. It will never be the same again. The seed sown by the Western elite in Kiev in 2014 is being reaped today in the harvest of division, discontent and poverty in Europe.

If we look at the three aims of the Special Military Operation, we can see that the first and second aims, the liberation of the Donbass and demilitarisation, are both 75% done, despite new arrivals of Western arms to prolong the agony. However, the reality is also that the operation has had to be much extended from the Donbass to the east and south of the Ukraine and there we are not even 50% done. However, the third aim, the denazification of the Ukraine, has not even begun and cannot begin until the murderous Zelensky regime has been replaced with a government which actually cherishes the independence and cultural traditions of the Ukraine. Then it will no longer be a servile chimpanzee of the LGBT West and its Nulands who, very politely speaking, have no time for Europe.

Military

Some have criticised the Allied Special Operation in the Ukraine. After four months, they say, not even the whole of the Donbass has yet been liberated. Such critics should get out of their armchairs and go and fight against NATO. We would soon see how fast they would go. Why has progress been ‘slow’? Firstly, because though the Allied Forces are small in size, they are fighting against the vast bulk of the Kiev Army, which has been trained, retrained, supplied and resupplied and dug into its fortified positions by NATO over eight years. Secondly, because the Allies are trying to avoid civilian casualties and of course casualties to themselves. That is not easy when Kiev is using civilians as human shields and shelling from residential areas. The Allies will not carpet-bomb like the West. There is no hurry.

However, with the very recent events in Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, the gateway to the whole of Central and Western Ukraine is being opened. Thus, we read the report on 25 June: ‘The Office of the President ordered the transfer of all reserves from the Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv direction for a counterattack in the Severodonetsk direction’. In other words, Kiev has only reserves left and it wants to transfer all of them. This sounds like desperation – the end is near. Judging by the quality of Kiev’s reserves so far, this will be a walkover. And that firstly presumes that the reserves will be willing to be massacred. And that secondly presumes that they can be transferred when all around the roads are occupied by Allied troops, or are controlled by Russian radar, artillery, drones and aircraft.

Most significantly of all, this means that Mykolaiv/Odessa/Kharkiv will be left more or less defenceless, without even reserves. According to serious Western data, Ukrainian military losses are about 200,000 killed with nearly three quarters of military equipment and ammunition destroyed. In just four months. This is catastrophic. If even Western spies from MI6, the BRD and Poland say this, then there is little future or hope for the US puppets in Kiev. We can only expect military collapse and the formation of a new government, authentically pro-Ukrainian (that is anti-American) and therefore pro-Russian. What happens after the liberation of the Ukraine? The liberation of Moldova? Of the Baltics? We do not know. But if aggressive NATO/EU sabre-rattling continues, all is possible.

Economic, Political and Ideological

As we know, the Western anti-Russian sanctions, have been a self-imposed economic disaster, an own goal. Blowback has been nasty. Dedollarisation is happening. Pay in roubles, please. Now. Food, fertiliser, oil, gas, all are rocketing in price, and it is not winter. Popular discontent and street demonstrations in Western Europe are mounting. In France the Rothschild candidate Macron has lost control of the French Parliament to the left and to the right. In the UK the ‘delusional’ (the word of members of his own Party) Johnson (a man condemned by his own as ‘an opportunistic journalist who has at his heart a moral vacuum’) is seen as a liability, who will lead the Tory Party to annihilation in any election. We will not speak here of other nonentities like Scholz, Draghi, Trudeau and Biden.

Then there is the formation of alternatives to the Western bloc. A new G8/BRICS+? Russia has seen plenty of discreet and not so discreet support from China, India, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, Africa (from Egypt to South Africa), Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Argentina, Hungary…. That is, from the aptly-named ‘emerging’ world on all five Continents, from those who have raw materials and manufacturing infrastructure. They want to emerge from the ruins of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The isolated West, the US, Canada, UK, EU, Australia, has few friends outside its inward-looking little world. There are just a few occupied vassals in Asia, like Israel, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, who are forced to buy Western arms in order to stop themselves being liberated from themselves, and that is it.

Even the mercenaries of the State-controlled Western media are beginning to go back on their State-paid lies. They are used to turning everything on its head, to inverting it all. Thus, the Russian Army was composed of ‘demoralised and untrained raw conscripts’, who had suffered ‘massive losses’ and ‘lacked fuel and ammunition’, ‘raped children and murdered’, were ‘in full retreat’ and bombed and shelled ‘residential areas and civilians’. Just change the word ‘Russian’ to ‘Kiev’ and we are a lot nearer the truth. Does anybody believe these media lies any more? Surely only the living dead? It must be embarrassing for these hacks who have been telling, or rather were ordered to tell, the opposite of the truth. They used to report their dreams as reality. Now they have to report reality – their worst nightmares.

Conclusion: The Age of Empires Is Over

After the Western defeats, or rather routs, in Iraq and Afghanistan, NATO has no military or political future. In fact, it should have been abolished after the fall of the USSR. The Ukraine (or whatever it will be called in whatever borders it will have when its liberation is complete) is Russian. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The expansion of NATO into Asia? What a joke. Taiwan is Chinese, as will be all the Western Pacific. Just forget it, NATO. You have already lost. The American Century which began in February/March 1917 with the palace revolt by corrupt aristocrats and generals in the Russian Empire, carefully orchestrated from London and New York, is over. Europe no longer needs to attempt suicide, let alone succeed. You are free to restore the sovereignty of your nation states.

The fact is that the Age of Empires is over. 1917 signalled the beginning of this. In 1991 the Red Star (USSR) Empire collapsed. Today the White Star (USSA) Empire, with its Twelve-Star EU (USSE) vassal Empire in tow, is collapsing, and for exactly the same reason: because nobody believes in their ideologies any more. Both Communism and Capitalism have failed. Now is the Age of Free Alliances of Sovereign Nations. What is the future of Europe after its third failed attempt at suicide? It is in reintegrating the Sovereignty of Eurasia, protected by the Russian resource umbrella. The Atlantic never united Europe, it divided Europe. If those who live across the Atlantic want to rediscover from us how to start living normal lives again, they can. But it will be on our terms, those of our Sovereignty, not on theirs.

We have spoken of the Special Military Operation as the culmination of Europe’s third attempted suicide. We have said that Europe will never be the same again after it. This is because, unless Europe is really serious this time about suicide (and it has managed to avoid it twice before), this Operation Z is going to split up the tyrannical Western world, EU and UK Europe, from the USA. It is Operation Z+. And who are we, those who will survive? We are Generation Z+. We are those who will come ‘out of great tribulation’ and survive. We are those who are going to live in the real Global world, not in the Western bubble Globalist world. We are the real Europeans of ancient and new European history, who refused to commit suicide, the Sovereign Europeans. Reality is dawning at last.